Her Oxford

judy g. batson

Her Oxford



Judy G. Batson Foreword by Linda Eisenmann

Vanderbilt University Press  nashville

© 2008 by Vanderbilt University Press Nashville, Tennessee 37235 All rights reserved 12  11  10  09  08  1  2  3  4  5 This book is printed on acid-free paper made from 30% post-consumer recycled content. Manufactured in the United States of America Frontispiece: Matriculation students, St. Hilda’s College, 1921. Reproduced by kind permission of the Principal and Fellows of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Batson, Judy G., 1943– Her Oxford / Judy G. Batson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8265-1610-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. University of Oxford—History. 2. Women—Education —Great Britain. I. Title. LF516.B38 2008 378.425’74—dc22 2008024087

To Dan: For so many things



Contents



List of Illustrations

ix



Foreword by Linda Eisenmann

xi



Preface

xv



Acknowledgments

1

Parting the Curtains

2

A Little Leavening

15

3

Plain Living and High Thinking

33

4

A Turning Point . . . and a Third Sister

46

5

First Adventurers, 1879–1889

57

6

Emerging from Adolescence

74

7

Honored Guests

99

8

The New Woman

112

9

New Principals, New Premises

130

10

On the Threshold

146

11

A Time of Sacrifice

161

12

Out of the Wilderness

176

13

A Changing Order

199

14

Weathering Storms

216

15

Looking Outward

229

16

War Again

244

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1

17

An Austere Feast

260

18

Full Status

274



Epilogue

285



appendixes

1

Principals of the Oxford Women’s Colleges, 1879–1960

291

2

Some Notable Women Students, 1910–1920

293

3

Some Notable Women Students, 1921–1940

301

4

Some Notable Women Students, 1941–1960

311

5

Principals and Staff, 1945–1955

321

6

Building Programs of the 1950s and 1960s

331



Notes

337



Bibliography

359



Index

367



Credits

380

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Illustrations



Elizabeth Wordsworth, 1889

91



Cyclists, 1895

92



Science students and tutor, 1896

92



Performance of Demeter at Somerville

93



Oxford Women Students’ Society for Women’s Suffrage postcard, 1912

94



Lady Margaret Hall hockey team, 1900

94



Lady Margaret Hall students on the river, 1905

95



Dorothy Sayers in Pied Pipings, 1915

96



Vera Brittain in her VAD uniform, 1916

97



Lady Margaret Hall students at a picnic, 1918

98



Matriculation students, St. Hilda’s College, 1921

191



Rowing eight, St. Hilda’s College, 1921

192



Annie Rogers in academic dress, 1921

193



Dining in hall, Somerville, 1930

193



Play rehearsal, Somerville, 1932

194



Students in the library, Somerville, 1932

195



Digging a garden, Lady Margaret Hall, 1940s

196



Students at Hartland House, St. Anne’s College, 1952

196



Ball, St. Hilda’s College, 1955

197



Queen Elizabeth at St. Anne’s dining hall, 1960

198

ix

Foreword

O

xford and Cambridge universities hold a special mystique for Americans. Not only are they two of the world’s oldest universities, but also they educated many of America’s first colonists and served as models for the earliest American universities. When Americans began to envision Harvard and Yale, they thought of Oxford and Cambridge. Although higher education in the United States would eventually expand in new directions—liberal arts colleges, land-grant universities, and community colleges—our oldest institutions would continue to emulate their prestigious British counterparts. One way in which both sets of these high-status institutions resembled each other was in their slow acceptance of women. As Judy Batson’s Her Oxford reveals, women’s experience at these oldest British universities paralleled their American cousins in compelling ways not often recognized in the countries’ separate histories of education. British women entered other universities earlier than they did Oxford and Cambridge. London University, for instance, opened its degrees to women in 1878; the four major Scottish institutions conferred degrees on women by 1892; and England’s Durham did so by 1895. Oxford, on the other hand, was slower than most in opening to women; it did so only rather grudgingly and through the sustained effort of dedicated advocates. Women experienced lesser treatment at Oxford for many decades while they pushed first for entry into examinations, then for the right to earn degrees, and eventually for equal governance among Oxford’s colleges. In 1920, women finally were permitted to receive degrees from Oxford, two years after winning the right to suffrage. Only in 1959 did the women’s colleges at Oxford achieve full and equal collegiate status, about eighty years after the first examinations were opened to women. By the 1970s, many of the all-male Oxford colleges began turning coeducational. Batson recognizes that, although other institutions welcomed women earlier, women’s inclusion at Oxford and Cambridge represented a par-

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ticularly important milestone. The oldest institutions carried prestige and resources that were vital to women’s full recognition as educated scholars. The same was true for women in the United States in regard to the most prestigious male universities. Women’s experience in the United States was quite similar to that at Oxford and Cambridge. Various women’s seminaries had opened throughout nineteenth-century America, as advanced education to prepare women for teaching careers grew in popularity. At the same time, collegiate-level institutions began to open for women. Oberlin College, a liberal arts institution in the Midwest, was the first coeducational college in the United States, admitting both women and African American students in 1837. The Seven Sister colleges opened as all-female institutions, trying to replicate the rigorous curriculum found at colleges for men. As the nineteenth century advanced, these prestigious Seven Sister schools increasingly strengthened their collegiate status, and all became full-fledged colleges by 1894. Yet the nation’s highest-status institutions, especially those known as the Ivy League, remained firmly all male and, like Oxford, resisted attempts to share their resources with females. Her Oxford provides a companion story to our understanding of how women secured their place at prominent male universities in the United States. The histories of Oxford and Harvard are particularly similar. American women argued for a place at Harvard beginning in the late 1800s, resulting in the creation of Radcliffe College as a coordinate institution in 1894. Yet Radcliffe began in much the same way as the women’s colleges of Oxford: The initial efforts of a dedicated group of local advocates secured first the right for women to take parallel examinations; eventually, women were permitted certificates to signify their achievements, and only later did they win the right to actual collegiate degrees. For instance, Batson tells the compelling story of advocate Emily Davies, who pushed for women’s right to sit for local Oxford and Cambridge examinations. She also describes the work of an advocacy group, the Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford, which bears striking parallels to Radcliffe’s Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, composed of influential Boston families. In many ways, the creation of Radcliffe as a new breed of “coordinate college” matched Oxford’s eventual acceptance of Somerville College and Lady Margaret Hall as parallel opportunities for women. Radcliffe’s women could not earn a Harvard degree, although sympathetic Harvard faculty offered separate classes for women; so, too, did some supportive male Oxford fellows agree to sponsor courses and lectures for women. Some other Ivy League institutions followed similar approaches as they slowly accepted women. For instance, whereas Radcliffe and Brown universities never supported a separate faculty for women, Columbia Univer-



Foreword

sity permitted its coordinate Barnard College to do so. At Brown, women in the coordinate Pembroke College (named for the Cambridge college attended by Rhode Island’s Roger Williams) could earn the Brown degree. At each school, just as at Oxford, local women and men banded together to advocate for women’s admission, manage their tuition and fees, provide local housing and scholarships, and monitor women’s behavior. Before women were fully accepted into the larger universities, these local societies played unusual but important roles in sustaining women’s scholarly opportunities. Following the early decades, when women’s main interest was in admittance to the universities, similarities continued between Oxford and U.S. colleges as women pushed for equal treatment on the campuses. Batson’s notion of how women “quietly infiltrated” Oxford, winning “concessions” along the way, matches the experience of many American students. Women in both settings were often barely tolerated as classmates. They worked long to secure the places in extracurricular activities and social clubs that were often required to earn such privileges. As Batson shows, both world wars further enhanced women’s acceptance at Oxford. Their compatriots were grateful for women’s generous contributions to the war efforts, both at home and in direct service abroad; in England, for instance, young, single women were conscripted during World War II, and many—like men—interrupted their schooling to support the war. In addition, in both the United States and Britain, women’s wartime enrollments kept many universities solvent when male students entered military service. Once they constituted such a large proportion of students, women seemed more acceptable and customary on postwar campuses. Yet, there are important differences between the Oxford case and the U.S. experience that makes reading Her Oxford particularly useful for U.S. historians. Britain’s national government could impact Oxford more than national or state officials could affect U.S. institutions. Britain’s University Reform Acts of 1854 and 1877, for instance, addressed Oxford’s curriculum, admissions, governance, and fellowship awards, whereas U.S. federal legislation rarely had such direct influence on private institutions. The United States also has nothing like the large federations that comprise both Oxford and Cambridge, with their separate and individualistic colleges. Even today, British students apply to a particular Oxford college and only later matriculate at the university. In the United States, the coordinate colleges for women, like the ones that developed at Harvard and Columbia, offer the closest parallel to Oxford’s arrangement, but even these were unusual in the U.S. setting. Batson has done a wonderful scholarly service by assembling in one place the histories of women’s entry into and experience of Oxford. As she explains, no previous single volume has gathered the histories of the five

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separate women’s colleges, or the stories of so many advocates and female graduates over eighty years of university history. At the same time, she has expanded the educational history of women by providing a comparison for historians of the United States and other nations who examine, assess, and analyze the results of advocacy for women’s higher education. Her effort is most welcome. Linda Eisenmann August 2007

Preface

W

alking around Oxford today, one sees what appear to be almost equal numbers of male and female students mingling easily together. Yet, until 1879, women had no share in what had been an exclusively male university since the Middle Ages. In that year, a small group of pioneering women practically crept into Oxford and quietly set about the business of becoming students. They had not come to storm the barricades, and they doubtless would have been repelled had they tried. Theirs was a policy of unobtrusive infiltration, and it paid off. Oxford slowly conceded to them its privileges, and in 1920, awarded the ultimate prize: full membership in the university. After that, women could be formally matriculated, take degrees, and sit on various legislative bodies. Almost forty more years would pass, however, before the five women’s societies—Lady Margaret Hall, Somerville, St. Anne’s, St. Hugh’s, and St. Hilda’s—were accorded the status of colleges of the university, self-governing entities with all the rights and obligations of the men’s colleges. In 1974, five men’s colleges admitted women on a trial basis, ending hundreds of years of tradition. Speedily, the barriers fell; all Oxford colleges are now mixed. Whether women have benefited from the trend toward coresidence is still being debated. Women students form such an integral part of Oxford today, however, that it’s hard to remember how their presence was so long ignored within the university. One reads with a jolt former prime minister Harold Macmillan’s account of his student days just before World War I, when women had been in Oxford for thirty-five years: There were no women. Ours was an entirely masculine, almost monastic, society. We knew of course that there were women’s colleges with women students. But we were not conscious of either. . . . For practical purposes they did not exist.1 When Vera Brittain, a former student of Somerville, wrote The Women at Oxford: A Fragment of History in 1960, she questioned why she would xv

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write such a history and then proceeded to give an answer. To her, the story represented “the contest for the equal citizenship of the mind,” and the women involved in the contest deserved recognition.2 I can hardly improve on her statement. Yet, so many volumes—histories, novels, biographies, and autobiographies—have been devoted to men in Oxford and so few to women that another chronicle of their struggle for equality surely won’t be superfluous.

Acknowledgments

T

his book would not have been possible without the generous assistance of many people.   I am particularly indebted to Pauline Adams, librarian and archivist at Somerville, for reading a draft of the first ten chapters and providing both constructive comments and encouragement and for always answering the numerous queries I have put to her through e‑mail. Special thanks to Dr. David Smith, librarian at St. Anne’s, for a mountain of photocopying he undertook on my behalf and for his prompt responses to my many emails over a number of years. Thanks also to Roberta Staples, librarian at Lady Margaret Hall, for her particular encouragement after reading a draft of the manuscript. In addition to these three, I thank these librarians and archivists at Oxford who facilitated my research in the archives of their colleges: Susan Purver, assistant librarian, Somerville College; Maria Croghan, librarian, St. Hilda’s College; Elizabeth Boardman, archivist, St. Hilda’s College; and Deborah Quare, librarian and archivist, St. Hugh’s College. Oliver Mahoney, archivist at Lady Margaret Hall, was very helpful in sorting through photographs for possible use in this book. I am grateful to Clare Woodcock, information officer at the University of Oxford, who patiently supplied facts and figures by e-mail whenever I requested them; to Victoria Rea, archivist at the Royal Free Archive Centre, who sent information on women’s entry into the medical profession in Britain; to Naomi van Loo, librarian at New College, for providing a history of women at New College; to Michael Currier, library privileges at Harvard’s Widener Library, for making my research there so easy and pleasant; to Peggy Keeran and Adam Rosenkranz for enabling me to use collections at Denver University and Honnold/Mudd Library in Claremont, California, respectively. I also thank Kathy Graves and Channette Kirby, librarians at the University of Kansas, who helped steer me through the stacks and through various ways to conduct research by computer. For permissions, I thank the following: The Principal and Fellows of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, for permis-

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sion to quote from archival material; The Brown Book; and Oxford Originals, edited by Stacy Marking. The Principal and Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford, for permission to quote from archival material; Somerville College, Oxford 1879–1979: A Century in Pictures, compiled by Anne de Villiers, Hazel Fox, and Pauline Adams; the Somerville College Report; and Janet Maria Vaughan: A Memorial Tribute, edited by Pauline Adams. The Principal and Fellows of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, for permission to quote from archival material; St. Anne’s College: An Informal History by Marjorie Reeves; Saint Anne’s College (vols. 1, 2, and supplement), ­edited by R. F. Butler; and The Ship. The Principal and Fellows of St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, for permission to quote from archival material; Club Paper; St. Hugh’s College Chronicle; and St. Hugh’s: One Hundred Years of Women’s Education in Oxford, edited by Penny Griffin. The Principal and Fellows of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, for permission to quote from archival material; St. Hilda’s College Chronicle; and The Centenary History of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford by Margaret E. Rayner. I am indebted to the following friends and relatives for reading parts of the manuscript and offering advice and encouragement: the late Michael Argyle, Nell Brewer, Donna Butler, Nancy Carter, Susan Honikman, Luis Oceja, Elizabeth Thompson, and Barbara Watkins. Thank you to Wendy Scott, a faithful e-mail correspondent, who has answered numerous questions about British terminology and culture. I particularly thank Dr. Barbara Watkins, who acted not only as a friend but also as an unpaid assistant on a two-week research trip to Oxford. She cheerfully spent hours every day in various archives on a project that was not her own, and she has inspired me with her own commitment to historical research. I can’t leave out Sharon Clark, who has always been my strongest cheerleader. Thank you to Michael Ames, director of Vanderbilt University Press, for his interest in the book and for his much-needed assistance in bringing it to the publication stage. Last, and certainly not least, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my husband, Dan, for his invaluable editing and organizational skills as he read the manuscript throughout its numerous transformations. His enthusiasm and support for this project have been infectious. 

Her Oxford

1 Parting the Curtains

I

f queried, Victorian Englishmen would probably have answered   that most middle-class women of marriageable age were, or soon   would be, wives and mothers. These Englishmen might have been surprised by the 1851 census. Out of a population of almost eighteen million, women outnumbered men in Great Britain by over 500,000, and more than 800,000 women—almost 10 percent of the female population— were classified as spinsters. The disparity in numbers of men and women continued to grow throughout the century; there were 1.4 million more women than men by 1911. A contributing factor was the higher mortality rate for young boys; fewer boys than girls survived past the age of fifteen.1 The imbalance was, however, especially great among the middle classes, and other factors besides mortality played into it. More men than women from this class were emigrating; they ventured to the far corners of the empire and often stayed away from England for many years, if not for life. Moreover, middle-class men who remained at home were increasingly disinclined to marry until they had accumulated enough capital to feel financially secure. To compound the problem, middle-class mothers and fathers expected their daughters to maintain or elevate their social status by marriage; young women who married beneath their station could bring disgrace on themselves and their families. With suitable men in short supply, therefore, middle-class women could not be assured of finding husbands, which they had been taught to accept as their primary goal in life. Middle-class daughters who did not marry could prove a serious financial drain on their families. Typically, their fathers were business, clerical, or professional men who relied solely on earned income, which might not stretch to supporting unmarried daughters at home for life. If these fathers died prematurely, became disabled, or lost their jobs, the future could look ominous. Women who had no marriage prospects or financial resources were compelled to enter the labor market. To maintain respectability, they needed to find work commensurate with their social status—not an easy task. By 1850, more than twenty-four thousand “surplus women” were trying to keep body and soul together by working as governesses. Being a 1

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governess was almost the only employment suitable for genteel girls who had to earn their own living, though it was a poorly paid, crowded field. In most cases, these young women had nothing except their gentility to recommend them to prospective employers. They had received little or no schooling, and their lack of knowledge was profound. They had had few opportunities to obtain any qualifications that would allow them to compete successfully with French and German women seeking employment as governesses in England, who might possess diplomas or other proofs of training. The handful of schools to which middle-class girls had access in midVictorian England were expensive and offered little beyond a smattering of French and a rudimentary knowledge of singing, dancing, and drawing. They were more like finishing schools, turning out young women who were graceful adornments to the drawing room or the tea table but who were woefully ignorant of grammar, history, or arithmetic. Their goal was marriage and motherhood, and if they needed an acceptable outlet from domesticity, they could turn to voluntary charitable work. Education was not considered necessary for any of these roles. In fact, many people believed education would prove a liability on the marriage market because it would diminish a woman’s femininity and render her less attractive to men. Writing Emma in 1816, Jane Austen slyly poked fun at the low expectations for girls’ education. Though seeming to praise Mrs. Goddard’s village school, in contrast to others where young ladies were primarily taught to be elegant know-nothings, Jane Austen described the establishment as a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies.2 As Austen implies, most parents did not want their daughters challenged intellectually. Many people firmly believed that serious study could adversely affect a growing girl’s physical and mental health, maintaining that such an expenditure of energy would inhibit natural reproductive development. Headmistresses often had no qualifications for managing even the most inadequate of schools, but because the education of girls commanded so little interest from the public at large and even parents, they knew that few people would inquire closely about either the management or the curriculum. Most of the teachers were incompetent and poorly educated, which was hardly surprising given that teacher-training schools were virtually nonexistent.



Parting the Curtains

The GBI and Queen’s College Many governesses lived on the edge of ruin. The slightest downward turn in their already meager fortunes could lead to destitution, and they had no safety net. Because so many governesses were in distress, the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution (GBI) was formed in London in 1843 to offer financial aid and advice to the unemployed and the infirm. Because the GBI derived its income primarily from subscriptions, thus making it dependent on the generosity of its patrons, the organization did not possess the resources to keep up with the numerous requests for assistance. (In 1844, when the GBI offered one £15 annuity, thirty-seven women promptly applied for it.)3 Knowing that the GBI’s finances were inadequate to help all those in need, the Reverend David Laing, secretary of the organization, looked beyond it to alleviate the plight of governesses. He came to feel strongly that governesses needed some bargaining power if they were to command adequate salaries. To that end, he supported the idea of qualifying exams for governesses; if they passed, they could obtain certificates of proficiency— concrete evidence of their abilities to show to employers. An initial series of examinations conducted by a committee of the GBI revealed such an abyss of ignorance, however, that it became clear to Reverend Laing and other supporters that governesses needed education themselves before they could be sent out to educate others. Fortunately, help was close at hand. F. D. Maurice, a member of the GBI governing committee and a professor at King’s College London, was a Christian Socialist who had a strong interest in women’s education. With colleagues from King’s, he instituted a series of evening lectures in 1847 known as Lectures for Ladies. These classes, though initiated for governesses, were open to all women. They proved so successful that it was decided to offer daytime courses to those who were free to attend. In one of those providential coincidences, Amelia Murray, lady-inwaiting to Queen Victoria and an enthusiastic philanthropist, had raised money for the purpose of founding a college for women at about the same time the lecture series began. When she decided to hand it all over to Reverend Laing and the GBI, a house was bought in Harley Street, London, as a base for establishing the lectures on a permanent footing. Miss Murray asked the Queen to lend her name to the endeavor, to which she “readily and graciously” assented, and on May 1, 1848, Queen’s College officially opened its doors. ­Queen’s was, however, a college in name only, for the standard of education was of a secondary, not university, level.4 But the system bore some resemblance to a university: Male teachers (primarily Maurice and his King’s colleagues) lectured, essays were assigned and graded, examinations were administered, and certificates (not degrees) were awarded. Students could choose from a wide variety of topics, including English, natural phi-

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losophy, Latin, mathematics, history, pedagogy, and geography. One can easily imagine that some of the lectures must have been daunting to girls with little or no educational background. In fact, Queen’s opened a preparatory department in 1849 for girls nine years old and over to prepare them for lectures (in 1860, it became known as Queen’s College School). Enthusiasm was high, however, and many of the students reveled in the opportunity to expand their intellectual horizons, as future educator Frances Mary Buss explained: Queen’s College opened a new life to me, I mean intellectually. To come in contact with the minds of such men was indeed delightful, and it was a new experience to me and to most of the women who were fortunate enough to become students.5 Though initially intended as a training ground for governesses, Queen’s offered its classes to any woman over twelve who could afford the fees. In defending this open admissions policy, Maurice explained that all women were potential teachers, even if their teaching extended only to their own children, but he added that “those who had no dream of entering upon such a work [teaching] this year, might be forced by some reverse of fortune to think of it next year.”6 Queen’s had, however, a far broader impact than educating governesses. Soon, the school could point with pride to two of its students, Frances Mary Buss and Dorothea Beale, who went on to become leaders in girls’ education. In 1850, Miss Buss founded the North London Collegiate School for Ladies, which became the pioneer institution for middle-class day education. In 1858, Miss Beale was appointed principal of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, which, although originally a day school, became a model for girls’ boarding schools in England. Though these two women were very unlike each other in character and even in approaches to education, they set a standard of discipline and intellectual training for girls at a time when young women were considered to be distinctly less educable than boys.7 Believing that the immediate success of Queen’s justified another college for women, Mrs. Elizabeth Reid, a wealthy widow with a strong interest in women’s rights, offered financial backing for a nondenominational institution (Queen’s was an Anglican college) that opened in 1849 in London as Bedford College. Though sharing many similarities with Queen’s, Bedford College differed primarily in its management. Bedford’s governing body was made up of both men and women, an unusual situation for the day, while Queen’s was managed solely by men. The difference proved to be an important one. The governors of Queen’s were more conservative than those at Bedford and were unresponsive to proposals that the college should push for more schemes to involve women in higher education. Bedford, on the other hand, benefited from the strong leadership of its women



Parting the Curtains

trustees, all of whom were vitally interested in extending educational opportunities for women. That visionary spirit propelled Bedford forward and led to its becoming a full-fledged women’s college and a constituent member of the University of London in 1900. Queen’s never developed beyond a good secondary school.

Emily Davies and the Cambridge Local Examinations From these modest beginnings, the campaign for women’s secondary and higher education proceeded slowly but steadily over the next quartercentury. Emily Davies, home educated and the daughter of a clergyman, emerged as a shrewd and tenacious fighter for a woman’s right to education.8 She had an unshakeable belief that girls were qualified, mentally and physically, to be educated in the same way as boys and to be submitted to the same tests to prove their capabilities. She was convinced that girls needed a goal to work toward, something to motivate them (and their teachers). Accordingly, she set her sights on opening the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations to girls and formed a committee of likeminded people for that purpose in October 1862. Oxford and Cambridge had established University Local Examinations in the late 1850s at various centers around England where schoolboys (under eighteen) not intending to go on to university could be examined to see what they had achieved academically before leaving school. Many of the middle-class boys’ schools had no external standards of proficiency, and the examinations were created to remedy this problem. No thought had been given to including girls in the exams until Emily Davies came along. She and her committee petitioned both Oxford and Cambridge to admit girls to the Local Examinations in 1862, but Oxford was prepared only to offer a special exam for girls. Miss Davies flatly opposed such a scheme, believing that tests exclusively for females had no recognized value. If girls’ education was ever to be taken seriously and have any extrinsic worth, then girls must be judged by the same standards as boys. Oxford stood firm. The reply from Cambridge was more encouraging, and in October 1863, the Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate agreed to allow a private experimental examination of girls—using copies of the boys’ examination papers—at the London center. Miss Davies was at first fearful that the examiners would not consent to undertake the extra work of reading and marking girls’ papers, but after she requested this favor of each one individually in writing, they all consented, most very graciously. The examination was set for December 14, and Miss Davies now had only six weeks to prepare for it. She knew that she couldn’t muster enough girls from London alone, so she sent circulars to headmistresses around the country asking for suitable candidates. This mailing in itself proved diffi-

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cult, for no published list of girls’ schools was available, and Miss ­Davies had to glean this information privately. She was in a fever of anxiety that, one, no candidates would be forthcoming, and, two, any candidate who did come forth couldn’t prepare adequately on such short notice. She had reason to be anxious on the second point because she knew full well that few girls had been subjected to the same academic regimen as many of the boys and lacked solid grounding in many subjects. The first fear proved ill founded; ninety-one girls volunteered to sit for the examinations. Miss Buss sent twenty-five candidates from the North London Collegiate School alone, but Miss Beale sent none because she disliked the idea of competition (although she relented a few years later and sent girls from Cheltenham for Local Examinations). Some headmistresses were reluctant to send candidates, no doubt fearful that the woeful level of scholarship in their schools would be exposed. Miss Davies had some sharp-tongued comments about such timidity: One is afraid the Examinations will foster the spirit of confidence and independence which is too common amongst girls of the present day. I fancy girls must be excessively insubordinate by nature, or they never would have a grain of spirit left, after going thro’ school training.9 By the December 14 examination date, eight girls had withdrawn, leaving a field of eighty-three to carry through the experiment. Miss Davies’s second fear—that girls might not be up to the mark—was also allayed, at least in part. The girls did remarkably well on the whole, given their insufficient training and lack of preparation time, but they showed considerable weakness in arithmetic, with thirty-four out of forty senior candidates failing. To their credit, the examiners attributed this failure to poor teaching, not to inherent deficiencies among the candidates themselves. On learning that ten of her girls failed in arithmetic, a chagrined Miss Buss promptly reformed how the subject was taught in her own school. To Miss Davies, the experiment conclusively proved that external standards were crucial for girls’ education, and she immediately began lobbying to have the examinations established on a permanent basis. She organized a petition of support containing a thousand signatures of influential men and women that was sent to Cambridge in October 1864. The University Senate in March 1865, by a vote of fifty-five to fifty-one, admitted girls to its Local Examinations for a trial period and made the scheme permanent in 1867. The Universities of Edinburgh and Durham soon followed Cambridge’s example, and Oxford finally fell into line in 1870. Opening up the Cambridge Local Examinations to girls was an important step toward reforming their education. Despite beliefs to the contrary, girls demonstrated that they could study hard and withstand the rigors of testing without any deleterious effect on their physical and mental health.



Parting the Curtains

For too long, their education had been conducted in privacy and isolation, with parents content not to pry too deeply into what their daughters were learning so long as they remained modest and womanly. Headmistresses were permitted to refuse inspection of their schools and to operate with no external system of accountability. Schools like those presided over by Miss Beale and Miss Buss were definitely the exception, not the rule. The time now seemed propitious for allowing a little more daylight to illuminate the shadowy world of girls’ education, and again it was Emily Davies who helped part the curtains.

Schools Inquiry Commission When she learned in 1864 that a royal commission would begin an official inquiry into middle-class education, Miss Davies immediately began asking whether girls’ schools would be included in the investigation. The first responses she received were not encouraging. The poet Matthew Arnold, also an inspector of schools, was among those who advised her not to raise her hopes, writing that he doubted the commission would be willing to examine girls’ schools along with those of the boys. Undaunted, she and others sympathetic to the issue (including Miss Beale and Miss Buss) submitted a petition to the commission. Their petition proved successful. The commissioners agreed to include girls’ schools, but as the secretary explained, not as much attention would be paid to them as to boys’ schools. He also pointed out that very few endowments (monies bequeathed by private benefactors for educational purposes) were available for girls’ schools. Despite the secretary’s warning, the Schools Inquiry Commission conducted a thorough and fair investigation. Although many headmistresses refused to allow inspectors into their schools, commissioners felt they obtained a good enough sample to paint a distressing picture of girls’ education (though singling out Miss Beale’s and Miss Buss’s schools for praise). The report, issued in 1868, found “want of thoroughness and foundation; want of system; slovenliness and showy superficiality; inattention to rudiments; . . . want of organization.”10 As for the teachers, the commissioners’ language was blunt: The two capital defects of the teachers of girls are these: they have not themselves been taught, and they do not know how to teach.11 The report noted that these same deficiencies applied to many boys’ schools as well but that the girls’ schools as a whole were definitely inferior. One of the commission’s most important contributions was the respect it paid to the female intellect, a respect that had been sorely lacking in most educational schemes for girls. The report stated that there is

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“weighty evidence to the effect that the essential capacity for learning is the same, or nearly the same, in both sexes.”12 It referred to the success of girls in the Cambridge Local Examinations as proof that they were not intellectually inferior to boys and noted that it was a good thing for boys and girls to share examinations where “the subjects dealt with are the great fundamental ones of general knowledge.”13 The commissioners also tackled the question of whether women’s health would break down if they were subjected to increased intellectual stimulation and concluded that the opposite was true. Emily Davies must have felt vindicated when she read their conclusion, for she had tartly observed: Women are expected to learn something of arithmetical science, and who shall say at what point they are to stop? Why should simple equations brighten their intellects, and quadratic equations drive them into a lunatic asylum?14 The report suggested that girls’ schools should come under some sort of supervision, that they should revise their curricula, and that higher education should be available for women. Significantly, the report recommended that endowments should be available for the education of girls and expressed regret that girls had been deprived of their fair share. In numerous instances, benefactors who, over the centuries, had bequeathed funds for education had not specifically excluded girls as beneficiaries, often making no distinction of sex at all. The ancient foundations that administered these funds had, however, devoted almost all the money to the education of boys. About £177,000 per year was allocated to boys’ schools, while less than £3,000 went to girls’ schools. When the Endowed Schools Act was passed in 1869, such gross inequality was addressed: “Provision shall be made, as far as conveniently may be, for extending to girls the benefits of endowments.” This meant that males would no longer monopolize the educational resources of the country, even though the act did not lead to full equality of distribution. By 1894, however, there were about eighty endowed girls’ schools, as compared to twelve in 1864—a significant improvement. In their report, the commissioners also suggested that a girls’ secondary school modeled on Miss Buss’s North London Collegiate School (a day school) be set up in every town with four thousand inhabitants or more. The report did not offer any practical advice on how to implement this scheme, but it gave two sisters, Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff, some ideas. They believed that schools could be entirely self-supporting, not charity or state-supported institutions, and they proposed a limited liability company to establish and supervise girls’ schools. In 1872, they initiated the formation of the Girls’ Public Day School Company (later, a trust), and the first



Parting the Curtains

experimental school opened in Chelsea in early 1873. By 1900, the trust had created thirty-six day schools (later renamed high schools) around the country, enabling approximately seven thousand girls to obtain a better education than had heretofore been possible. The curricula in these schools were broadly based on those in the boys’ schools, and girls were instructed in preparation for the University Local Examinations. More girls’ public schools, primarily boarding schools, were also established during the latter part of the nineteenth century, many of them modeled on Miss Beale’s Cheltenham. They were less socially heterogeneous than the day schools, and they often had strong links with prominent public schools for boys, even adopting the prefect systems so pervasive there and emphasizing the importance of organized games (though physical education had certainly not been one of Miss Beale’s enthusiasms). As noted earlier, the Schools Inquiry Commission report lamented the lack of trained teachers in girls’ secondary schools. With more schools for girls opening around the country, the need for skilled teachers grew even stronger. Maria Grey and her sister were instrumental in establishing a training college for teachers in 1878 in London. It opened with only four students, but within ten years the college, which became known as the Maria Grey Training College, was producing qualified teachers. Miss Beale, who had largely drawn on her own former pupils to staff her school, founded a training department for teachers of secondary schools at Cheltenham in 1885. Two years later, she established training systems for both elementary and kindergarten teachers at the Ladies’ College. In 1892, Bedford College added its own teacher-training department. In these ways, some of the more progressive educators were trying to supply much-needed qualified teachers, but the biggest impetus came when women achieved access to higher education. Many of the women who were among the first to go to university took up teaching afterward, with salutary effects on girls’ secondary education, as Vera Brittain noted: The standard of school education began to rise as soon as the schools could send their pupils to universities, which in turn sent them back, trained and qualified, to teach in the schools.15

Establishment of Girton College, Cambridge The inevitable (but for most undreamt of) consequence of acknowledging that girls had as much right and ability to be educated as boys was access for women to a university education. Emily Davies had clearly not been slow to grasp the implications of the Schools Inquiry Commission Report on the importance of higher education for women. In a letter she

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wrote in 1866, two years before the commission report was finalized, she had already complained that admission to the Local Examinations was not enough. They are very useful so far as they go, but the higher class of schools are not satisfied to “finish” their pupils at seventeen. In fact they distinctly prefer not finishing at all, but transferring them to a different kind of teaching.16 She had long felt that girls of promise should not be compelled to end their education at seventeen or eighteen, and she eventually concluded that a new college was a necessary next step. Not one to tarry, she embarked on plans toward founding a university-level residential college for women. While the developments described thus far took place primarily in and around London, in the north of England Anne Jemima Clough was also pursuing higher education for women. Daughter of a Liverpool cotton merchant and sister to the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, Anne Jemima Clough had been interested in girls’ education for some time, and her name appeared on the petitions to Cambridge University in 1864 and to the Schools Inquiry Commission in the same year. Like Emily Davies, she wanted to extend the benefits of education to women beyond the age of schoolgirls. In 1866, she conceived of a scheme to organize lectures by university men for women over eighteen at centers in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield. So successful was the first lecture at the four centers—on astronomy by a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge—that Miss Clough formed the North of England Council for the Promotion of the Higher Education of Women in 1867 to coordinate future lectures on various topics, with herself as secretary.17 A program of lectures began in other northern cities, and by 1870, more than twenty centers had opened, with large audiences in attendance for each series. Miss Clough and the council then turned their sights on securing an examination for those attending the lectures so that these women could have some standard by which to measure their knowledge. Although they thought a test could be particularly useful for teachers, they didn’t want to limit participation to this segment of the population. The council decided to approach Cambridge, chosen because of the earlier success with the Local Examinations, to institute a special women’s examination for those over eighteen. When Emily Davies heard about this plan, she adamantly refused to support it, explaining that ladies’ lectures and special women’s examinations constituted an “evil principle becoming organized, and gaining the strength which comes from organization.”18 Nevertheless, the council, believing that such an examination was best suited to their students’ capacities, presented the petition to the Cambridge Senate. The



Parting the Curtains

senate approved, and the first of the Cambridge Examinations for Women was held at two centers in 1869, with thirty-six candidates participating. In London, Emily Davies, also aware that Cambridge had proved a sympathetic venue, proposed to situate her women’s college near there and had received encouragement from some Cambridge men. She formed a subcommittee to draft a college constitution that would allow no system of separateness. She wanted the constitution to state clearly that the ultimate aim of the college was to secure admission to the degree examinations and eventually to achieve full membership in the university. Miss Davies knew her goals wouldn’t be realized at once but felt they had to be forcefully stated. Not without difficulty, she got her way with the subcommittee and directed her energy toward finding a suitable site and fund-raising. Although Miss Davies had hoped to raise £30,000 toward building her college, she had only £2,000 by 1869 (novelist George Eliot sent £50). She knew that renting a house would be her best option for the time being, and she found one in Hitchin, which was twenty-six miles from Cambridge. Miss Davies chose Hitchin because she thought the rural air would be healthy and the students could have more independence without the restrictions of town life, plus more freedom from unwanted interruptions. She also felt that parents might be more amenable to sending their daughters to her if they knew that Cambridge’s young men were well away from them. She found a small group of dons willing to travel the twentysix miles by train to give lectures, and in October 1869, Hitchin College opened with five students. One student remembered that the length of a lecture was fixed “neither by our capacities of taking in knowledge, nor by the convenience of the lecturer, but by the hours of railway trains.”19 Not surprisingly, given her desire that the standards for a women’s college be identical to those for men, Miss Davies was uncompromising in requiring her students to follow the same course of study as male undergraduates and under the same conditions and restrictions. At the outset, she didn’t even know whether her students would be permitted to take the tripos exam (the Cambridge final honours examination), but she allowed only three years and one term to prepare for it, because that was the requirement for the men students. As one of the early women students later observed, “No allowance was made for our colossal ignorance of the special subjects required.”20 The University Senate refused permission for women students to sit officially for the exam but agreed to allow a private test, and Miss Davies found enough examiners who would consent to look over the papers. (Women were not allowed to sit officially for the tripos exam until 1881.) When in 1872 three Hitchin students sat for the tripos exam—one in mathematics and two in classics—and gained unofficial honours (obtaining a degree was out of the question), she felt her stringency was justified.

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Though the students had undoubtedly felt the strain of working for the tripos under her rigid rules, there was much jubilation when they learned they had passed. In what was probably considered an unladylike display of high spirits, the students climbed onto their roof and rang the fire alarm bell so loudly that the Hitchin authorities clambered to get the fire engines ready for action. The celebrants finally calmed down and silently shouted their victory by tying three flags to the chimney.21 In the same year that Emily Davies opened Hitchin College, Henry Sidgwick, a young philosophy don at Trinity College, Cambridge, who had been involved with developments in the North, proposed a lecture series for women in Cambridge that would prepare them for the women’s examination. Though he had a cordial relationship with Miss Davies, he disagreed with her about the value of the women’s examination, believing that it could more adequately test women’s knowledge at that stage of their education. His plan met with approval, and in the spring of 1870, the series opened with lectures given by members of the university on English history, English language and literature, arithmetic and algebra, Latin, and economics. As in the North, the lectures were well attended. Almost immediately, women outside the Cambridge area began arriving to take part, and arrangements had to be made to secure lodgings for them in local homes. Seeing the need for a permanent house of residence for women coming to Cambridge from some distance, Mr. Sidgwick suggested to Emily Davies that she join forces with the lectures committee to move her college into Cambridge and house young women from other areas who wanted to attend the lectures. He knew the Hitchin house was proving too small and thought it inevitable that Miss Davies would relocate closer to town. She declined to cooperate, refusing to ally herself and her college with a program designed specifically for women and rejecting the notion of moving into Cambridge in the near future. By necessity, however, she was soon forced to compromise on the latter because she needed more space than the Hitchin house offered. In 1872, the Hitchin College Committee, despite serious financial difficulties, purchased a site near the village of Girton, two-and-a-half miles from the center of Cambridge. Building began, and the move was made to new quarters in 1873, with the college renamed Girton College.

Newnham College, Cambridge, Founded Henry Sidgwick, though pained by Emily Davies’s refusal to cooperate, forged ahead with his project to establish a residence for women in Cambridge. In doing so, he wasn’t interested only in opening up higher education for women. He had a grander dream—reforming and modernizing



Parting the Curtains

the Cambridge curriculum and examination requirements. Sidgwick had long deplored the heavy emphasis on classics at the expense of newer disciplines such as science and modern languages, and he desired a more flexible course of study, which he felt would benefit both men and the newly arrived women students. Knowing full well how difficult it would be for him to buck tradition within male Cambridge, Sidgwick thought a women’s college would be an ideal place to experiment with new approaches to higher education, particularly since women came with no tradition of classical scholarship. Miss Davies was extremely upset by his plan, believing it jeopardized all of what she had accomplished with Hitchin College, and wrote of her dismay to Mr. Sidgwick in May 1871. Undeterred, he found a suitable house to rent at 74 Regent Street and set about persuading Anne Jemima Clough, whom he knew well and admired, to preside over it. She agreed and welcomed the first five students when Merton Hall was opened in October 1871. Newnham College marks its beginning from that date, although the establishment didn’t adopt its present name until it moved to a section of Cambridge called Newnham in 1875. As envisioned by Henry Sidgwick, the students under Miss Clough’s direction were freer to work at their own pace than were those at Hitchin College and could stay for a shorter period of time, if necessary. Many took the women’s examination after attending lectures and tutorials, while others prepared for the tripos exam, though not according to any rigid timetable. By 1885, however, most Newnham students were working toward the tripos exam, but it was their decision to do so, not a policy enforced from on high. Despite Miss Davies’s fears that Newnham’s establishment might sound the death knell for her own college, both institutions thrived, and by 1888, each housed approximately a hundred students. Though founded by strong-minded people with different educational theories, Girton and Newnham came to have mutual aims and methods, acting as allies in the desire to gain opportunities for women at Cambridge. Over time, Miss Davies’s resentment toward Henry Sidgwick softened, particularly when they joined forces in petitioning Cambridge in 1896 to award degrees to women (unsuccessfully, as it turned out). She realized that they were fighting the same battle even though they might use different weapons. And, although she disagreed with the principles on which Newnham was founded, she couldn’t deny that two colleges enabled more women than she alone could have accommodated to reap the benefits of higher education. One writer described the changing educational opportunities for ­­middle-class girls and women in Victorian England as an “unexpected revo­lution,” and the phrase is apt.22 When the Schools Inquiry Commission began its work in 1864, there were few good secondary schools for

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girls, and higher education for women did not exist. Only thirty years later, girls could choose from an increasing number of secondary schools that offered them the same educational opportunities as boys. At the higher level, eleven university colleges were open to both men and women, and five colleges had been established just for women (Girton, Newnham, Somerville, Lady Margaret Hall, and Royal Holloway). Who could have predicted that an attempt to improve the intellectual abilities of governesses would lead to a transformed educational climate for women in general? Many factors played into this revolution, but determined reformers like Emily Davies were certainly important agents of change. Indeed, it has been said of Miss Davies that if she “had not existed, she would have had to be invented.”23 She did not single-handedly overturn the barriers that kept women from getting an education, but thousands of schoolgirls and the pioneering university students of the nineteenth century owed her an incalculable debt.

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hat progress was made at Oxford after girls were refused admittance to the University Local Examinations in 1862? A second application was rejected in 1866, but in 1870, Oxford finally agreed to allow girls to participate. In 1873, the Oxford Senior Local Examination produced unexpected results. Heading the list of senior examinees was A.M.A.H. Rogers, who was promptly offered an exhibition at Worcester College, which, along with Balliol, awarded exhibitions (simi­lar to scholarships) on the results of this examination. The only difficulty was that A.M.A.H. Rogers proved to be a seventeen-year-old young lady named Annie Mary Anne Henley Rogers, daughter of Thorold Rogers, a political economist at Oxford. When the list was announced, Annie Rogers received a congratulatory letter from Charlotte Green (soon to become a staunch supporter of women’s education in Oxford), who pointed out a pertinent fact: I am especially glad to remember that you did not seem at all tired by your work because it is often urged by the enemies of the higher education of women that hard work is sure to make them ill. I hope that you may keep well and continue to be a contradiction to such sayings.1 After Rogers’s gender came to light, however, Worcester withdrew its offer and embarrassedly presented her a set of books as compensation. But the door had inadvertently been opened on the issue of women at Oxford, although it was hurriedly shut in their faces and remained closed for several years to come. Fortunately, Annie Rogers did not disappear from the Oxford scene; she became a tireless (and some would say tiresome) champion of women’s education at Oxford, single-mindedly, even aggressively, devoting her life to its furtherance.

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University Reform Compared to Cambridge, Oxford adopted a leisurely pace along the road toward university education for women, but reform did penetrate its misty air during the second half of the nineteenth century. Two University Reform Acts, one in 1854 and one in 1877, led to a vigorously renewed and modernized university and one more susceptible to women knocking on its closed doors. Responding to critics who maintained that Oxford was a static and outmoded institution, the prime minister, Lord John Russell, set up a royal commission in 1850 to investigate charges that the university catered only to the rich, that too much power resided with the heads of colleges, that its curriculum was outdated, that tutors did too much while professors did too little, and that patronage and religious prejudice controlled election to fellowships. Despite objections by many within the university that Oxford’s traditions would be destroyed, the commission’s work led to the University Reform Act of 1854, which corrected many of the problems just noted. A new university constitution was drawn up; the governing system was remodeled; fellowships were based on merit, not privilege, and became more open to laymen; new disciplines of study were introduced; and the professorial system was reorganized and strengthened, among other reforms. These changes were not, however, effected without howls of protest from the many conservatives entrenched behind the college walls. Commissioners made laudable progress in addressing some of the criticisms leveled at Oxford, but they did not have much success in making the university more accessible to poorer students. It did permit private homes to accommodate students who couldn’t afford to live in a college or hall (provided the homes were within a mile and a half of Carfax, the old center of Oxford where roads from the North, South, East, and West meet), but an Oxford education still came at too high a price for those with slender means. For example, a student could obtain an education at Durham University for £60 a year, while an Oxford man could expect to spend at least £150 or £160 a year. Although Keble College, founded in 1868, was established for the purpose of attracting less affluent men who were willing to live simply and economically, unlike some of the more aristocratic colleges, its students were more middle class than really poor. (Initially, a Keble education cost from £80 to £85 a year, but by the 1930s, that figure had risen to £150 a year.) In addition, even though Keble’s founding seemed to be in the spirit of reform, the college was distinctly Anglican, which meant that the traditional linkage between the Church of England and a university education was preserved. It could be argued, however, that Keble set important precedents, particularly for women at Oxford. One was its commitment to “plain living and high thinking,” the poet Wordsworth’s phrase and the motto un-



A Little Leavening

der which Keble was founded.2 Women’s colleges would also be run on a strictly bare bones economy, with no luxuries provided beyond a room of one’s own, although their simplicity would be based more on necessity than on virtue. Still, Keble was a model for the women’s colleges, showing that one could pursue an Oxford education on limited means. Another precedent was rooted in Keble’s administration, which differed from the men’s older foundations. Oxford colleges are traditionally self-governing, with control vested in the head and the fellows. Keble was the first to concentrate power in its head (called the warden) and a council made up of people outside the college. “Home rule” was not established until 1952. Because the women’s colleges began as little more than hostels and had no resident tutors, they too relied on external councils for governance. The men who sat on these councils had an intimate knowledge of Oxford and its traditions and were thus able to help steer the women’s colleges through some hazardous shoals until they too could become full-fledged collegiate institutions within the university. The Reform Act of 1854 was an important step in modernizing the university, but the commissioners had, for the most part, avoided dealing with the issue of religion—always a thorny problem at Oxford. The act abolished religious tests as a requirement for matriculation, but the university was still closely tied to the Church of England.3 Although many college fellows were clergy, the obligation for fellows to take holy orders was no longer mandatory. The voices of those who wished to further loosen the Anglican hold on Oxford would, however, not be stilled, and there were repeated demands and petitions to abolish religious tests within the university. Finally, in 1871, parliament passed the University Tests Act, which allowed any man to study for a degree (except in theology) or hold a university post without declaring any religious belief or belonging to any specific church or denomination. When, as we shall see, the proponents of a women’s hall of residence in Oxford split over the issue of whether it would be religiously affiliated, Somerville Hall benefited from the religious freedom embodied in the University Tests Act; it was established on a strictly nondenominational basis. Also in 1871, another royal commission was formed, primarily to look into the financial arrangements of the university and colleges, and its findings led to a second University Reform Act in 1877. This act pertained to revenues and property and how they were distributed. Most of the reforms enacted are quite detailed, but two deserve special mention. First, a Common University Fund was created to which colleges were required to contribute according to their means, and the wealthier colleges (Christ Church, Magdalen, and New College in particular) now had to contribute financially to the common good of the university instead of retaining all their resources for themselves. Out of this fund, endowments could be created for professors, readers, lecturers, and specialists, which meant

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that certain university money could be applied to other purposes, such as maintaining buildings. Second, the university and colleges now had to keep financial accounts according to specific rules and to publish them. In short, with this act, Oxford’s wealth was basically redistributed, to the benefit of education, teaching, and research. In this atmosphere of reform, what happened to the old monastic Oxford where fellows were elected under an obligation of celibacy? Although reformers denounced the system as anachronistic, the 1850 commission refused to consider marriage for fellows, believing that the college system would be fatally weakened. In fact, Oxford was described in the 1850s as “a society of celibates with little or no leaven of family life.”4 Few women, beyond the wives and sisters of heads of houses and professors (who were permitted to marry), were visible in university circles. The celibacy rule was, however, relaxed with the second Reform Act, and Oxford as a male preserve vanished. In truth, the celibacy requirement had been waived with increasing frequency since the early 1870s, when the second royal commission began its work. Thomas H. Green, fellow of Balliol and an early supporter of women’s education in Oxford, was allowed to retain his fellowship when he married in 1871, as was Mandell Creighton, fellow of Merton and another future friend of women in Oxford, on his marriage in 1872. John Wordsworth, whose sister became one of the first principals of an Oxford women’s college, had to relinquish his Brasenose fellowship when he married in 1870, but his college reelected him as fellow several years later. Humphry Ward was not so fortunate, however. When in 1872 he married Mary Arnold, who became a well-known novelist, Brasenose took away his fellowship, demoting him to tutor, and never offered it back. John Sutherland, author of a biography of Mrs. Humphry Ward, speculates, probably correctly, that his demotion was “an unflattering measure of Humphry’s worth in the academic market.”5 Clearly, the colleges could exercise some flexibility over the question of marriage for fellows, and pragmatism no doubt triumphed over principle when they wanted to keep someone badly enough. The three aforementioned fellows who were allowed back to their colleges after marriage went on to enjoy brilliant careers.6 Humphry Ward never achieved eminence except as the husband of a celebrated author. After his marriage, he labored as a tutor for several years and eventually became art critic for the London Times, a position he did not fill with particular distinction. Married fellows remained the exception, however, until the reforms suggested by the second royal commission were enacted. Even then, no uniform standard existed among Oxford colleges as to whether fellows were permitted to marry, and restrictions on marriage varied considerably from one college to another. Yet enough dons were able to marry that Oxford, particularly North Oxford where a number of young couples set up



A Little Leavening

house, now presented a more feminine aspect. In fact, undergraduates had fun at the expense of this new domesticity, penning jokes about perambulators in the parks.

Lectures for Ladies at Oxford Many of the young wives who began appearing in Oxford in the early 1870s were serious, reform minded, and fashionably austere. They scorned pretense, wore plain smocked Liberty dresses, and decorated their homes with William Morris wallpapers, old furniture, and blue pottery. Among the leaders of the young married set were wives of some of the men just mentioned: Mary Ward, Louise Creighton, and Charlotte Green. In Mary Ward’s words, they were “on fire” for women’s education and, influenced by programs elsewhere, proposed to organize a Lectures for Ladies Committee. Eleanor Smith, sister of a professor at Balliol and a trustee of Bedford College, had undertaken a similar scheme in 1866. She organized classes and lectures for women, but the project languished for lack of support— there weren’t enough women in Oxford to take advantage of it. The time was also not ripe. John Ruskin, then Slade Professor of Art, may have typified the views of many in the university community when he refused to admit women to his lectures in 1871, condescendingly referring to them as “the bonnets” and maintaining that they would make no sense of the material and would only “occupy the seats in mere disappointed puzzlement.”7 Only a few years later, however, with the infusion of intelligent, eager women like Mary Ward and her friends into Oxford life, the possibility of a successful lecture series seemed more promising. The committee held its first meeting in 1873, and by this time other women had been enlisted to work for the cause. Louise Creighton recruited Bertha Johnson, young wife of Arthur Johnson, history tutor and chaplain of All Souls, who happily joined–not surprising, considering that her Irish father had been an enthusiastic supporter of equal rights for both men and women in education. She would spend the rest of her life in service to women’s education at Oxford. These energetic ladies proposed a series of lectures and classes to be open to any interested women. They were fortunate in having access, either through marriage or other social contacts, to a number of the most influential and forward-looking men in the university, and they managed to secure the services of some of these prominent figures to deliver lectures on literature, mathematics, German, Latin, arithmetic, and most popular, history. From the first lecture given by Arthur Johnson to an overflow crowd, the series was a success. Probably because the new lecture scheme had the support of many distinguished Oxford men, the university showed its willingness to help by lending lecture rooms and allowing participants to read in the Radcliffe

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Camera (a library and reading room). In November 1875, at the urging of Thorold Rogers, father of Annie and one of the series lecturers, the university passed a statute empowering the Delegacy of Local Examinations to institute special examinations for women over eighteen, which were to be of a higher standard than the Senior Locals (at which Annie Rogers had proved so adept)—a standard more equivalent to university finals. Women would receive no degrees after successfully completing the exams, but they would be entitled to teaching certificates. A pass examination was provided in six subjects, and honours tests were available in fourteen: English, Latin and Greek, French, Italian, German, Spanish, mathematics, ancient history, modern history, philosophy, physics, chemistry, biology, and geology.8 English and modern languages, not then recognized subjects for men at Oxford, were established purely to accommodate women. In fact, for years the English School was derided as lightweight, even after it was approved as the Final Honour School of English Language and Literature in 1894. An examination corresponding to responsions was also set up and called the First Examination for Women (or Women’s First).9 Unlike men students, who had to demonstrate proficiency in Greek and Latin for responsions, women could substitute modern languages if they wished because their education (if they had had any formal instruction) generally did not include the classics. No intermediate examinations were made compulsory, and women were allowed to begin work for their finals once they completed the Women’s First exam. Oxford imposed no time limit for women to complete their studies and required no terms of residence before they sat for the examinations. The lectures could now be linked to these special examinations, which provided a purpose and focus for the series and no doubt contributed to its popularity. Given Oxford’s earlier reluctance to allow girls to participate in the Local Examinations, creating special examinations for women was a momentous step. With the lectures and classes an assured success and the additional benefit of the related university-level exams and teaching certificates, it seemed only natural that Oxford would exert a powerful attraction for women all over the country to come and further their education. Did the university authorities have any inkling what was in store? They should have, if they were aware of developments at Cambridge. One wonders whether the authorities would have been so generous in instituting the special women’s examinations had they foreseen the opening of Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall in 1879.

Birth of Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall Women did come, eager to take advantage of the new intellectual opportunities available to them. The men and women who had spearheaded the effort to get the lecture series off the ground now began to seriously discuss



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the possibility of establishing a small residence hall where women outside Oxford could come to live and study. After all, if Cambridge had opened halls of residence for women without apparent disastrous consequences, shouldn’t Oxford be equal to the experiment? In fact, it was after a visit to Girton in 1878 that two of the prime movers in women’s education in Oxford, Edward Talbot, warden of Keble, and his wife, Lavinia, returned full of enthusiasm for such a venture. They firmly believed that the movement for the higher education of women was no passing fad, and as Dr. Talbot remarked to his wife, “Why should the Church not be for once at the front instead of behind in this new development?”10 Dr. Talbot organized a meeting on June 4, 1878, of seventeen of his distinguished colleagues to discuss opening a hall of residence for women that would be specifically linked to the Church of England. Dr. Talbot’s proposal was not met with approval by certain sections of Oxford society. Dr. H. P. Liddon, dean of Christ Church, thought the scheme was “an educational development which runs counter to the wisdom and experience of all the centuries of Christendom.” Elizabeth Sewell, sister of the warden of New College and author of moral stories for girls, had attended some of the Lectures for Ladies but nevertheless believed “the competition with young men highly undesirable, and the unavoidable publicity in a place of comparatively small size dangerous to women at an age so open to vanity and excitement.”11 Despite such disapproval, discussions proceeded. Almost immediately, however, the Church linkage proved to be a stumbling block, and the supporters of women’s education divided into two opposing groups, which Mary Ward dubbed the Christ Church camp and the Balliol camp. The more conservative Christ Church camp, of which the Talbots were members, embodied the traditional religious sentiments of the times, while the more liberal Balliol camp, supported by Mary Ward and John Percival, president of Trinity, espoused the values of nonsectarianism. The two groups could not reach consensus on whether the proposed hall should be Anglican or nondenominational. Fortunately for the future of women at Oxford, they did not harden into two hostile camps but agreed to differ amicably. Each group proceeded to open a residence hall in accordance with its beliefs, and Lady Margaret Hall, based on Anglican principles, and Somerville Hall, strictly nondenominational, were born. Thus, women at Oxford, like those at Cambridge, became the lucky beneficiaries of two halls instead of the proposed one. Because the two opposing groups chose to work in friendly cooperation, they agreed at a meeting on June 22, 1878, to establish and operate under a centralized, united organization that became known as the Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford, commonly called the AEW. The AEW was to be responsible for all aspects of women’s education in Oxford—the halls being purely residential—and

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its purpose, as defined in the foundational meeting, was “to establish and maintain a system of instruction having general reference to the Oxford examinations for women over 18 years of age.”12 The association would collect fees for lectures and tutorials, set up special classes for women with university men willing to teach them, organize tutorials, and enforce rules and regulations. Initially, no college lectures were open to women, but in the early and mid-1880s, a few colleges—notably Balliol, Brasenose, and Corpus Christi—became amenable to the idea, provided that the lecturer agreed. (By 1886, the AEW reported that forty-one college lectures had been opened to women, “and the Committee knew of several others to which our students, if they desired, could readily obtain permission.”)13 The AEW then had to secure permission for women to attend the lectures and, because it was improper for young women to attend on their own, to arrange chaperones for those wishing to go. (The AEW also became the parent body overseeing Home Students, those not wishing or not able to live in a residential hall—but more about them later.) The general administration of the AEW was in the hands of a committee made up of the officers of the AEW (a president, two secretaries, and a treasurer) and twelve members of the association, of whom half were required to be women. The AEW was fortunate in securing as committee members men and women who were truly devoted to the cause of women’s education in Oxford—Professor T. H. and Charlotte Green, Bertha Johnson, and Annie Rogers, among others—and who worked tirelessly, despite many other commitments, without remuneration. Indeed, Annie Rogers, whose name is prominent throughout these pages, no doubt honed her considerable tactical and administrative skills through her membership in the AEW, for it is reported that she missed only four committee meetings in forty-one years of service. Her knowledge of university statutes became legendary, and her brother maintained that Psalm 119 was her favorite because of its frequent reference to statutes. She enjoyed being in the thick of administrative and academic battles and deliberately tried to keep debates and discussions somewhat foggy and muddled, based on her own dictum: “Never argue with your opponents; it only helps them to clear their minds.”14 The importance of the AEW in maintaining educational unity despite religious differences among the supporters of women’s education cannot be overstated. Another of its critical functions, not apparent at the time of its founding, was to act as the unofficial link between women students and the university, which for years disavowed all responsibility for them. By means of its annual reports, the AEW kept the university informed about the women in its midst, regardless of whether the information was welcome. Meanwhile, the two residential hall committees were busy sending out prospectuses to potential students and patrons, raising funds, finding ap-



A Little Leavening

propriately modest accommodations, and nominating suitable women to act as principals. The Anglican group described its institution as one “conducted according to the principles of the Church of England, but with full provision for the liberty of those not members of it” (the future principal objected to the liberality of the last clause), where students would live as though in a “Christian family.” A committee was established to govern the hall (as yet unnamed) with Dr. Talbot as chair, but initially no formal constitution was drawn up. (In 1892, the hall was constituted under a deed of trust, with property vested in three trustees.) The nonsectarian group advocated equality of educational opportunity, with no mention of religion, and maintained that student life would be run along the lines of an “English family.” At its second meeting, the group established its commitment to liberal ideas and academic excellence by proposing the name Somerville Hall for the fledgling institution in honor of Mary Somerville (1780–1872), a scientist of international repute. This almost exclusively self-taught woman published many learned books and moved easily in an intellectual London circle after her marriage to William Somerville, her second husband. It is said that she quietly worked on mathematical problems, concealed behind her fan, while she carried out her social duties. Her portrait now hangs in Somerville College, possibly reminding students that graciousness and learning can happily coexist—a combination that seemed almost impossible to early opponents of women’s higher education. At the start, Somerville seemed more attentive to governance matters than did the Anglican hall. A governing committee of fourteen was elected in 1879 with Dr. Percival as chair, and a joint-stock company, not intended for profit, was formed. Two years later, this company was incorporated as the Association of Somerville Hall, consisting of three categories of members at different subscription rates, and the association elected a council of eighteen to manage the company’s affairs and submit annual reports. The principal was an elected, not an ex officio, member of the association.

Principals for the New Halls The Anglican committee had no name for its hall when Edward Talbot wrote to Elizabeth Wordsworth on November 19, 1978, asking her to become principal. We do not know who first proposed her for this office, but most agree that the choice was an inspired one. A devout churchwoman, her Anglican credentials were impeccable. Her father served as bishop of Lincoln and her brother John, fellow of Brasenose at the time of her appointment, became, as noted earlier, bishop of Salisbury. Although she inhabited the upper-clerical, Trollopian world of bishops, archdeacons, and deans, scholars also loomed large in her background. She was the greatniece of the poet William Wordsworth, and her grandfather (the poet’s

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Her Oxford

brother) became master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Her own father had been headmaster of Harrow when she was born and, even after he became bishop, pursued scholarly studies whenever his other duties would allow. Though not formally educated herself, as indeed few women were at that time, Elizabeth Wordsworth was nevertheless well-read, wellinformed, and competent in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, French, and German. Her own innate curiosity, combined with a tolerant, intellectual father who encouraged all his seven children (five daughters, two sons) to develop scholarly interests, enabled her to hold her own in the clerical and academic societies that she inhabited. She was already well known in Oxford, having a large number of influential friends there. With her background, she was acceptable to people across a wide range of society: church people and those who represented both town and gown. Though devoutly religious, she was no puritan. Her company was much prized at dinner parties; her witty and often acerbic conversation enlivened many a staid North Oxford evening. Indeed, her gaiety, wit, and enthusiasm are among her most frequently mentioned attributes in the accounts of early students under her supervision. When Professor Talbot first wrote to her about the principal’s position, Elizabeth Wordsworth consulted with her father, who encouraged her to accept. Her much-loved brother John was, however, less enthused and said he would advise her not to go if a refusal would end “the whole beastly thing. . . . But as I don’t suppose it would I think you had better accept it—go into it with a good heart, and try to make it as little unpleasant as you can.”15 What she thought of his reply we don’t know, but she accepted the post, a position she would retain for the next thirty years. Dr. Talbot certainly never regretted the committee’s choice, for as he wrote forty years later: “It brought us not only the lady’s own distinction of intellect and character but the cachet and warrant of a name second to none in the confidence of English Church people.”16 It is fitting that, as Elizabeth Wordsworth indelibly imprinted her personality and values on the institution that she would head, she should have had the naming of it. The committee accepted her suggestion that it be called Lady Margaret Hall after Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), mother of King Henry VII and benefactress of both Oxford and Cambridge; as Miss Wordsworth noted, she was “a gentlewoman, a scholar, and a saint, and after being three times married she took a vow of celibacy. What more could be expected of any woman?”17 Madeleine Shaw Lefevre, the Somerville Committee’s choice for principal, was not well known in Oxford before her appointment, but she was as suited by her background to lead a nonsectarian hall based on liberal principles as Elizabeth Wordsworth was for Lady Margaret Hall. She came from a distinguished political and academic family with wide-ranging con-



A Little Leavening

nections, daughter of a first civil service commissioner who was later vicechancellor of the University of London and sister of a liberal member of parliament. She was greatly interested in people and, despite being somewhat shy, had been involved in numerous philanthropic activities throughout her youth. Now forty-four, she was poised and graceful and impressed everyone who met her with both her stateliness and womanly elegance. Because Somerville was to be egalitarian and nondenominational, Oxford’s old guard tended to regard it as an eccentric and somewhat alarming institution, but Miss Shaw Lefevre’s femininity and serenity reassured those who feared that every male bastion in the university would soon be stormed by radical women. Though Madeleine Shaw Lefevre was an admirable choice to lead Somerville, she did not leave the imprint of her personality on the hall in the same way Elizabeth Wordsworth did on Lady Margaret Hall, perhaps because she retained her position for only ten years before retiring. To their credit, both principals allowed no friction in their relationship, despite religious and philosophical differences. They each separately visited Cambridge before taking office and were no doubt influenced by the cordial atmosphere maintained by Emily Davies and Anne Jemima Clough. They came back to Oxford armed with advice from these two pioneers but determined not to slavishly imitate the Cambridge patterns. Each had her own ideas about how she wanted to run her hall. The job of selecting principals completed, the committees now had to find accommodations to house them and the first students. Money was in short supply, so their choices were limited. In May 1879, Lavinia Talbot, of the Lady Margaret Hall Committee, found what proved to be a suitable house at the end of Norham Gardens in North Oxford with a private garden and the Cherwell running along the back. It was owned by St. John’s College, which offered a ninety-nine year lease. The major drawback was its isolation, for it was well outside the main university precincts and not conveniently situated for walking to lectures and classes. Also, the windows fit poorly, and the chimneys smoked. One of the first students remembered that “we moved from room to room according to which chimney smoked worst on any particular day (I think they all smoked).”18 The site was charming, however, and its very remoteness later proved an advantage when Lady Margaret Hall (hereafter often referred to as LMH) needed to expand; additional land was readily accessible, although some rather touchy negotiations with St. John’s proved necessary. (By 1881, LMH already needed more room, and a redbrick extension was completed in 1884, enabling the hall to accommodate twenty-five to thirty students.) With the house acquired, the business of furnishing, decorating, and hiring staff began. Bertha Johnson and other devoted Oxford women directed most of this work with a necessary frugality. One unfortunate result of this penny-pinching was the quality of food served at LMH; it

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Her Oxford

remained abysmally low for many years, and many students remembered the pervasive smell of burning fat. In June 1879, the Somerville Committee found Walton House, a grey stone structure between the Woodstock Road and Walton Street, also owned by St. John’s. The trustees initially leased the property but were able in 1880 to purchase the freehold outright, which enabled them to avoid any possibility of interference by St. John’s.19 Although conveniently located to the center of Oxford, it was set behind high stone walls, which both protected and concealed the women students. The walls reassured parents and shielded conservative Oxford residents from having to gaze on the unwanted females in their midst. A large tree-filled garden lay at the back, which delighted Shaw Lefevre when she first saw it. Friends and supporters donated most of the furniture, with Mary Ward contributing framed pictures for the walls and some of her blue pottery. Annie Rogers, evaluating the sites occupied by LMH and Somerville, offered these insightful comments: [They] were not too far from the university quarter for their own convenience nor so near it as to occupy land which the university or the men’s colleges might want for themselves. They were within easy reach if you wished to visit them or to keep an observant eye upon them, and yet they did not thrust themselves upon you. No one could possibly suppose that such modest establishments could rival the men’s colleges.20 The two halls now sat ready for occupants, but students did not immediately come forth for admittance. In fact, Miss Wordsworth was somewhat anxious on that point, for as she wrote in the summer of 1879, “I feel rather like a bald person carrying round a nearly useless brush and comb.”21 She knew full well that many people, especially parents, would agree with her friend the dean of Ely when he wrote to wish her success in her new venture but added that he was very concerned about “the possible ultimate effects of the present rage for stimulating young brains, and particularly young female brains.”22 His was not the voice of a lone crackpot; as noted earlier, many critics of higher education for women firmly believed that a prolonged course of study could have deleterious effects on young women’s health. Even parents who felt that their daughters could withstand more intellectual stimulation might well balk at sending them away from home to study for two to three years, particularly in Oxford where their position seemed so precarious. But despite these fears, a few acceptances trickled in. By October 1879, nine women took up residence at Lady Margaret Hall, and twelve at Somerville. In the words of novelist and critic Marina Warner, herself a student at LMH in the 1960s, the “discreet revolution” had begun.23



A Little Leavening

Oxford Home-Students Organized When the two halls opened in the fall of 1879, twenty-five women who were already living in Oxford and attending the lectures sponsored by the AEW chose not to attach themselves to LMH or to Somerville. In order that these women should be part of the same educational scheme as those in the halls, the AEW took direct responsibility for them through the AEW secretary. A problem immediately arose when the nonhall students came under the guidance of the AEW: How should they be designated? Several names were bandied about—Town Students (too inaccurate); Students Not Attached to a Hall (too cumbersome); and Unattached (too likely to be the butt of undergraduate jokes)—but nothing seemed to take. In 1887 Annie Rogers, along with thirteen past and present students, petitioned the AEW for a recognized name: “This we ask believing that by reason of belonging to no corporate body we are in danger of failing to obtain recognition as University students.”24 Finally, at the suggestion of the rector of Exeter, the title Oxford Home-Students was adopted in 1891, with the form Society of Oxford Home-Students officially accepted by the AEW in 1898. As the first secretary of the AEW, Charlotte Green shepherded this unique collection of students until her husband died in 1882, after which she resigned. In 1883, Bertha Johnson took over and then became principal of the Home-Students in 1893, a post she held for almost thirty years with enthusiasm and devotion. Indeed, her personal and administrative influence on the Oxford Home-Students (the group later evolved into St. Anne’s College) was as great as that of Elizabeth Wordsworth on LMH. Bertha Johnson held the term “Home-Student” in high regard, for it suggested “the quality of retirement and unobtrusiveness” that she so prized.25 Though passionately devoted to the cause of higher education for women, she was no feminist. She had little interest in turning out career women; in fact, she, along with many women of her class, greatly valued the idea of unpaid social service, as well as proficiency in all the domestic arts. As is obvious by her work in helping to establish them, Mrs. Johnson certainly did not oppose collegiate halls of residence for young women, but she believed that the ideal education for young women allowed them to cultivate their minds while living in a civilized, cultured home environment. To her, the Home-Students and the AEW were a perfect match— combining both home and student life, with neither domestic nor intellectual pursuits being sacrificed. Mrs. Johnson herself was the model for such a society: she directed the affairs of her students from her North Oxford home, always refusing to accept a salary for her work, while raising a ­family and doing volunteer social work among Oxford’s poor. (Though Arthur Johnson greatly supported his wife’s unpaid labor for the AEW, he didn’t hesitate to remind her of her domestic duties. When Ruth Butler worked as secretary to Bertha Johnson, she remembered Arthur Johnson

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banging on the window of the dining room where the women were engrossed in paperwork and shouting, “I want my lunch.”)26 With tact, humor, economy, and generosity, Bertha Johnson presided over her heterogeneous group, conducting interviews in her sitting room and pouring out countless cups of tea. It could have been no easy task to oversee women of such varying ages, nationalities, and educational backgrounds, for from the beginning, the Home-Students consisted of a much more diverse population than did the two halls. Some of the students were from illustrious academic Oxford families and lived in their own homes; others lodged with relatives, friends, or ladies whom Mrs. Johnson had carefully handpicked. Older women interested in the new opportunities for higher education but uninterested in hall life found the Society ideally suited to their needs, as did women not wishing to pursue a full course of study but wanting to briefly sample some of what the AEW offered. Catholic women who became Home-Students lived in a hostel founded especially for them in 1908. (An Anglican hostel was established in 1928.) Somewhat surprisingly, foreign students rapidly appeared, many with some collegiate experience or even degrees from their own countries, who wished to study for one or two years in Oxford to prepare for a higher degree or to concentrate on a particular subject for teaching purposes. Among the earliest arrivals from overseas were young women from North America, a little taken aback by the strict rules of decorum laid down by the AEW, but charmed by Bertha Johnson’s solicitude and enthusiasm. One remembered being asked at her first interview whether she had “warm enough woollens” to withstand Oxford’s cool, damp climate.27 A number of American women who studied as Home-Students between 1887 and 1907 returned home to take positions in higher education, some achieving the rank of professor.

Modest Beginnings The first women students at Oxford were permitted flexible arrangements in regard to their length of residence, examinations, and course of study. They were under no obligation to remain in Oxford for any fixed time, and only two of Somerville’s original twelve students stayed for a full three years (several had to leave early to care for ailing parents or to begin earning their living). According to the regulations of the AEW, women could be called students even if they didn’t plan to take any final examinations, so long as they paid their fees for attending lectures and submitted to the end-of-term examinations (collections) in the courses they had studied. This flexibility was probably necessary in the early stages of women’s tenure in Oxford, for it was by no means clear how rigorous their education was to be; however, it gave ammunition to critics who saw women students as dilettantes, capable of only superficial dips in pools of knowledge.



A Little Leavening

Although the early women students didn’t have to work toward the special women’s examinations, those who did so increasingly became the majority. Before being allowed to begin the studies they were so eager to take up, however, they were required to pass the First Examination for Women or an equivalent accepted by the Delegacy of Local Examinations.

The First Examination for Women The Women’s First examination consisted of papers in two languages (usually French and German), arithmetic, and either the first two books of Euclid or algebra. For many women, it was a difficult hurdle, given the deficiencies in their education to that point. In fact, the LMH Committee once recommended waiving it completely for students who were finding their preparations a struggle. Elizabeth Wordsworth strongly objected to such a proposal. She believed that many students needed the prospect of such an examination as a spur to meticulous study, making the uncharitable but truthful comment, “Nothing makes girls work so hard as being ploughed” (an Oxford term for failing an examination).28 The Women’s First often posed problems even for students who were in no danger of failing it, for they had to labor over subjects that held little interest for them, delaying their pursuit of a chosen field of study. Florence Rich, a science student at Somerville between 1884 and 1887, described her frustration. My work at first was deadly; there was I, with most wonderful opportunities around me . . . passing my time in the uncongenial task of learning the elements of German. I asked to be allowed to do a little scientific work as well, but I was told I must do nothing to imperil the success of the examination the following June.29 Being denied the sweets in a candy store is not an experience most of us could handle with equanimity. The examination was held twice a year—in June and December. If a student did not successfully get through it within a reasonable amount of time (determined by those in authority over her), she would be requested to leave until she passed it. Women were in fact encouraged to get this examination out of the way, if possible, before taking up residence in Oxford so that they could immediately plunge into the work that interested them. Janet Courtney, a student in the mid-1880s, successfully passed her examination a year before she went to LMH, and she was among the few who chose Greek as one of her languages, along with German. She intended to study philosophy, and she felt those two languages were essential for her purpose. Her decision aroused some comment, for women weren’t expected to choose either Greek or Latin. She was allowed to proceed and, to her surprise, found that the amount of Greek required for the examina-

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tion was not very formidable. Over a summer, she managed, with the help of her brother, who had received a first in Greats, to master enough Greek to pass without much difficulty.30 She is, however, singled out as one of the most distinguished students of that early band, so it may be unfair to use her as a standard by which to measure the progress of other women.

Lectures and Tutorials The women who came to study at Oxford in 1879 were at first not permitted to enter the venerable men’s colleges to attend lectures. They congregated in more humble surroundings—rented rooms over a baker’s shop in Little Clarendon Street—to hear lectures given by Oxford dons sympathetic to women’s education. (As for Proust and the madeleines that evoked his remembrance, the smell of baking bread would for some students forever awaken memories of hours spent scribbling notes while listening to lectures.) In her autobiography, Elizabeth Wordsworth listed the course schedule for that first fall term (called Michaelmas term at Oxford), which was divided into lectures for both pass and honours examinations. The pass subjects were Latin and Greek, modern history, mathematics, physical science, logic, and political economy. For honours, students could attend lectures in English, German, French, mathematics, and modern history.31 The AEW set up the course lectures and hired the lecturers, who were paid eight pounds a term per course—slightly more if the class size exceeded twelve students. Without the cooperation of these lecturers, who gave generously of their time to women students when they had many duties within their own colleges to perform, women’s education at Oxford would never have got off the ground. When some of the colleges began to allow women accompanied by a chaperone to attend lectures in the early and mid-1880s, Balliol took the lead. The college stipulated that women students enter the lecture hall by a private staircase, not through the door that men used. Women were also required to sit apart at a side table on the dais, far removed from the male students, who sat in the main section of the room. It is curious that Balliol took pains to hide the women from view as they entered the lecture hall and then put them in such a conspicuous position once they were there. It was surely distracting for the men and certainly embarrassing for the women. In fact, one woman student was so unnerved by her first experience in Balliol that she decided never to go back. Apparently, she didn’t tell anyone about her decision but three times each week wrote postcards to her chaperone, explaining that she couldn’t attend the upcoming lecture. Her actions surprisingly went undetected, and she admitted to her failure of nerve only many years later at her college reunion—Gaudy, as it is known in Oxford.32 The AEW had to request permission from individual lecturers because the men’s colleges would not compel them to admit women if they



A Little Leavening

didn’t wish to. Even if an individual was prepared to admit women to his lectures, his college could refuse to allow it. Some men who permitted women to attend their lectures didn’t seem to approve of their presence. An LMH student in the mid-1880s remembered one lecturer who looked at the women with a “very cross face” and “put us in seats with our backs turned to him. That lecture is in a rather small room for the number of people who go to it, so we girls were cheek by jowl with the men. As a rule we have a table all to ourselves on the platform.”33 This student seemed to find the episode amusing, and a sense of humor no doubt eased some of the awkward situations in which women found themselves. Not surprisingly, men who had already shown themselves willing to devote extra time to women through the AEW were among the first to allow them into their lectures—in fact, doing so relieved them of the burden of having to give the same lectures twice. Though it was clear that this early band of women had many influential friends within male Oxford, the issue of admittance to lectures remained a delicate one for several years. By 1906 all colleges had theoretically opened lectures to women, but individual lecturers could still exclude them if they wished. The AEW again proved invaluable as it worked with quiet diligence to get women into as many of the college lectures as possible. The AEW also arranged private tutorials for students in their chosen subjects. Neither Somerville nor LMH had resident tutors in those early years, but the women in the halls and the Home-Students shared the few female nonresident tutors appointed by the AEW, most notably Annie Rogers and Clara Pater in classics. The AEW primarily turned for tutorial help to Oxford University men who were known to be advocates of women’s education. In a system similar to that for men, each student was assigned a tutor who would oversee her work toward the final examinations. She could be sent for additional coaching to someone else if her tutor felt that she was in need of more specialized knowledge. During hour-long meetings with her tutor once or twice a week, the student would read aloud her assigned essay on a particular topic and then receive her tutor’s comments and criticisms. The tutor would assign another essay topic for the following week and suggest books to consult. Many women, as well as men, found this intensely personal tuition an often unsettling process, particularly if their essays weren’t up to snuff, but many believed it to be the most intellectually stimulating part of their academic lives at Oxford. As one LMH student remarked after a tutorial: “I always come away from him with a deep sense of how stupid one is and how ignorant, and I think that’s a good sign.”34 Men usually went to their tutors alone, but with the strict chaperonage rules, women had to be accompanied, either by another student or by one of the chaperones designated by the AEW. Even if the tutorial took place in Somerville or LMH, two women were required to attend if the tutor was male.

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As secretary of the AEW, Bertha Johnson recruited tutors from the men’s colleges, arranged for the payment of fees, and collected progress reports at the end of every term (typically conducting such work at her dining room table). Although the job may not have been too taxing in the first few years, it became burdensome as the number of women students increased and her involvement with the Home-Students grew. Mrs. Johnson’s task grew easier when the residential halls began to appoint their own tutors, although she opposed this development when it came. Somerville gained two resident tutors (one in history and one in natural science) in the mid-1880s. Lilla Haigh, one of the original twelve students, returned to her college in 1882 as a resident tutor in history, and Margaret Seward, the first student to take mathematical moderations when that school was opened to women in 1884, became natural science tutor in 1885. Notwithstanding these appointments, the real development of the tutorial system in the women’s colleges didn’t occur for over a decade. By the mid-1880s, women at Oxford could see signs of progress, even though their numbers were small and their financial situation shaky. There were now two residence halls and a society for women who did not wish to live communally. Women students had access to some of the most distinguished men in the university through lectures and tutorials. Their community was supervised by a central body that looked out for their welfare, both intellectually and socially, and kept them unified at a time when unity was important to their survival. Though their status could only be described as precarious in those first few years, the women were quietly putting down roots, hoping to establish their presence as an accepted feature of Oxford life.

3 Plain Living and High Thinking

T

he women students at Oxford entered a very different world from the one inhabited by undergraduates (a designation reserved for male students in those days). Men lived in the Oxford most often featured in guidebooks—a magnificent architectural treasury of pinnacles, domes, and ancient quadrangles. Their colleges provided them with suites of rooms and menservants (“scouts,” in Oxford parlance) to look after their needs. Most of the college kitchens turned out an abundance of good food, and men could invite friends for breakfast or luncheon parties in their rooms at which a variety of tasty dishes could be ordered and brought up by scouts. Alcohol was never in short supply, and some of the colleges were famous for their ales and wine cellars. The women, in contrast, lived simply. An LMH student in the mid1880s, on rereading the diary she kept during her college years, was struck by “the secluded, almost nun-like life we led.”1 Their buildings had no architectural pretensions, and they felt fortunate, even delighted, to have a single bedroom to themselves, which also had to double as a sitting room. The food served at Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville was plain English fare, often indifferently cooked, and water was the customary drink at lunch and dinner. Two amusing articles were printed in Murray’s Magazine in 1888, written anonymously and in the first person, contrasting a day in the life of an Oxford undergraduate and a female student. The male is cheeky and irreverent, the female earnest and sober. The young man rarely notices the time; he follows his own schedule as much as possible. The young woman’s day is ruled by the clock, and she punctiliously notes where she is to be at almost any given moment. The male is awakened by his scout at whom he flings a boot. He has a hangover but goes to a breakfast party where he dallies until his lecture at 11 a.m. He complains that the lecture is very boring and takes no notes but spends the time doodling in his notebook. Afterward, he is summoned to his college dean, who questions him about the fines he’s accumulated for being outside the college gates past midnight. He lies his way out of the situation, saying later to a friend, “I tremble to think of the tortures that 33

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old Dean will suffer in the next world for all the fibs he’s made me tell in this.” Then, he lunches on salmon, drinking cider from a silver tankard, which the college provides for all the men. He’s off to the cricket field after lunch, where he remains until almost the dinner hour in hall at 7:00 pm. When the rather raucous meal is over, he plays pool and finishes the evening with friends back in college drinking whisky and smoking tobacco. He finally stumbles off to his own rooms “to sleep myself fresh for a similarly improving day on the morrow.”2 The female student at a women’s hall rises at 7:00 am but feels guilty because she knows that other women are already up and at their books. Breakfast is taken communally after chapel, and the hours between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm are reserved for study and going to lectures. She attends two lectures, duly chaperoned, and spends the rest of her morning reading in the Radcliffe Camera at one of the tables reserved for ladies only. After lunch in hall at 1 pm, she devotes a few hours to recreation—maybe walking, boating, playing tennis, or attending late afternoon tea parties in friends’ rooms—but returns to her books around 5:30 before supper at 7:45. In the half hour between supper and chapel at 8:45, she may participate in one of the in-college literary societies or sit in on a committee meeting. After chapel, she is free to socialize with her colleagues or indulge in some light reading until the 10:30 curfew bell, upon which she must retire to her room alone. She admits at the end of the article that life in college may not seem very exciting to outsiders but adds that “it is full of occupation and interest to us . . . and opens out to most of us realms of thought and study which at home would be entirely closed.”3 These two articles, though exaggerated and no doubt tongue-in-cheek, capture the difference between the lives of male and female students in the Oxford of the late 1880s. Of course, not all males existed in the prolonged adolescence of this author, but undergraduates were not fenced in by many rules and regulations. It was expected that men would, over the course of their university careers, learn how to discipline themselves and to prepare for their lives after Oxford. As a fellow of All Souls’ remarked, “In other countries men, or rather boys, go to the University to learn. In England they go to develop.”4 Women students at Oxford were more rigidly supervised than the men, but as young Victorian ladies, they were used to restrictions at home and in society at large. Leaving home to attend college was a relatively uncommon experience for middle-class women in the 1880s, and parents needed reassurance that their daughters would be sheltered and protected. Their guardians in Oxford wanted to allow them no opportunities to misbehave or to give offense, because the very future of women at Oxford depended on whether they conducted themselves with propriety during those first early years. As students, they adhered to a timetable much like the one described



Plain Living and High Thinking

by the anonymous writer in Murray’s, but they didn’t feel like automatons. For most women, their days were more varied at college than at home. They saw their world expanding both intellectually and socially, even within the rather narrow confines of their Oxford environment. They were delighted to be there.

Restrictions and Freedoms for Early Women Students Though LMH and Somerville were collegiate halls of residence, they resembled English upper-middle-class homes, a fact both tried to publicize when persuading parents to part with their daughters for two or three years. The young women who lived in college were expected to behave with modesty and decorum, both within and without the college walls. A Somerville student recalled a familiar scene when she and her colleagues lounged in armchairs after dinner: I hear a door open behind me and a soft rustle pass through the room; this meant a general uncrossing of legs as a token of respect for what was perhaps the one and only Early Victorian prejudice of our most broad-minded Principal.5 At LMH, Elizabeth Wordsworth insisted that her students wear hats and gloves if they were going outside, even if their excursion went no farther than the college garden. Both principals were concerned that their students give no offense in matters of dress, for pioneer women students had already earned a reputation for eccentric clothes. In the days before women came to study at Oxford, one Oxford professor declared he could invariably single out Newnham and Girton students in a large gathering because they were so careless about their appearance.6 Oxford tradesmen, though recognizing that women students would not be dressed in the height of fashion, hoped that the influx of women into town would be good for business, as the following comment by one merchant illustrates: The aesthetic greens, and drabs, and blues, if they can never gratify our sense of beauty either in colour or shape, may nevertheless help to replenish the empty exchequer, and keep Oxford trade on its feet.7 Miss Wordsworth and Miss Shaw Lefevre wanted Oxford women to dress tastefully but inconspicuously, and they didn’t hesitate to intervene if someone’s appearance drew notice. Miss Wordsworth once ordered a student to change a hairstyle that she thought was particularly offensive (a large curl in the middle of her forehead), and Miss Shaw Lefevre insisted that one of her charges refrain from wearing a new hat on the street.

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When the student expressed surprise, thinking that the hat became her, Miss Shaw Lefevre replied, “That’s just it! It’s too becoming.”8 The LMH Committee even placed a long mirror in a prominent spot so that students could tidy their appearance before venturing outside. Miss Shaw Lefevre set a good example for Somervillians because she always looked quietly elegant, even when gardening. Miss Wordsworth didn’t possess her counterpart’s dress sense. She adhered to old-fashioned styles, even to the wearing of frilly caps that were the mark of married Victorian women and often of women who had assumed responsible positions. One LMH student poked gentle fun at her principal’s best cap: To the uninitiated eye it looks like a bundle of flowers tied together by a ribbon of velvet and then a row of lace all around. It’s very very little (and you know Miss Wordsworth’s head is very wide and large) and generally it’s crooked! All her best caps are as little as that but they are not all quite so fine!9 Despite this bit of ridicule, Miss Wordsworth always looked entirely proper, and she and Miss Shaw Lefevre desired no less for the students under their care. Women students were sometimes permitted to walk alone on Oxford’s outskirts (although it wasn’t encouraged) but were never to venture into Oxford proper without one or two companions, even to attend church services. A chaperone was required for attendance at all university and college lectures or for any function where men might be present (regardless of how ancient some of the men might be). The AEW secured the services of paid chaperones, and these good souls often brought along their knitting to while away a tedious hour. Anecdotes have circulated from these days about bored undergraduates handing back a dropped skein of wool with exaggerated politeness during a lecture. Whether true or not, the chaperones were always slightly figures of fun. Because official chaperones were sometimes hard to come by (and who could wonder), Miss Wordsworth, Mrs. Johnson, Miss Shaw Lefevre, or other ladies associated with the halls or Home-Students would often act in this capacity. Gertrude Bell, who came to LMH in 1886, wrote her parents about being chaperoned by Miss Wordsworth and Miss Shaw Lefevre: But when le Fevre [sic] takes us it isn’t nice at all! We then feel that so much as to look at the body of the hall where the men are is a cardinal offence, and to go anywhere close to one of them would be too dreadful to think of. Wordsworth is much more casual as you know!10 (Bell apparently felt that Somerville’s principal had more prejudices than that against young ladies sitting with crossed legs.) Miss Wordsworth, if



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enjoying a lecture, was known to audibly express her dissent or agreement with the lecturer, apparently to no one’s distress. But she often found chaperoning an onerous task and would sometimes refuse outright to sit through the same lecture for a fifth or sixth time. The women students’ social duties were not neglected, either. Just as their mothers might do at home, both Miss Wordsworth and Miss Shaw Lefevre exposed their young women to Oxford society—at dinners, lunches, teas, and “at home” days in college—where they were expected, regardless of how bashful or unpolished, to perfect their manners and cultivate the art of conversation. One shy Somerville student, who described herself as “so absorbed by the world of books that I was not alive to the claims of the world of reality,” remembered that Miss Shaw Lefevre often asked her to entertain the more interesting (and sometimes more formidable) guests of the college. Despite being terrified, she believed that her principal “tried deliberately to cure my shyness and to draw me out of myself” and was ultimately grateful.11 Miss Wordsworth set great store by good conversation and was such an adept and witty conversationalist herself that many young women counted social engagements with her in the company of Oxford’s intellectual elite as an important part of their Oxford education. In keeping with LMH’s Anglican traditions, students were required to attend in-college morning and evening chapel services, church at least once on Sunday, and Elizabeth Wordsworth’s Bible classes on Sunday evening. Though religion formed the core of her being, Miss Wordsworth was not sympathetic to any outpouring of religious enthusiasm. In her Sunday evening addresses, she counseled her charges not to make themselves conspicuous: “A true Christian often wears ‘what other people wear’ without trying to show his individuality by eccentric fashions.” She encouraged a little worldliness, believing that dinner parties, good novels, newspapers, and public amusements would improve the young women’s characters, not debase them. As one student remarked, “It would have been difficult in LMH to develop into a prig.”12 Despite this seeming liberality, Miss Wordsworth favored students whose religious feeling most nearly matched her own. Even Somervillians, though not required to demonstrate any religious affiliation, were strongly encouraged to attend church on Sunday, but they were free to choose any church they pleased. Although some of the early students may have chafed under the numerous restrictions, most were happy to comply for the sheer pleasure of being allowed to partake in the abundance of Oxford, however small their portion. They knew they were there on sufferance and that many regarded them as interlopers; therefore, they were determined not to cause any more offense than their mere presence already had. A woman who enrolled as a Home-Student in 1879 recalled:

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We still had a feeling of diffidence in being students at Oxford at all. We shrank from letting the outside world know of our doings. I remember how my sister and I used to stuff our notebooks up our jackets when walking to lectures in order not to be recognized as that eccentric creature, a girl student.13 They quickly censured anyone among them whose behavior seemed out of line, for they didn’t want to jeopardize their Oxford future. Janet Courtney (LMH 1885; hereafter, the date after a student’s name indicates the year she entered her college) remembered waiting outside New College for a chaperone who didn’t appear. With great trepidation, she decided to brave the lecture hall alone, expecting the heavens to fall. To her relief, neither the lecturer nor the undergraduates paid her any undue attention, but some of her cohorts back at LMH criticized her, declaring that she had been too bold in entering the hall unaccompanied.14 Irksome as some of the restrictions may seem to later generations, they were no more severe than most young Victorian women encountered at home. And there were some important liberties that exhilarated this first group of students. In the biographies and autobiographies of these pioneers, one phrase keeps cropping up (anticipating Virginia Woolf’s famous work by almost fifty years): the pleasure in a room of one’s own.15 Though most grew up in well-to-do homes, few had any space to themselves. Many came from large families, but even in smaller ones, privacy for young women was not considered important. Unwanted interruptions from servants or other family members could occur at any moment of the day. Janet Courtney recalled that her room facing the Cherwell was the first she had ever had to herself, and though the LMH beds were the “hardest ever known,” she was overjoyed by the freedom she felt within the college’s four walls.16 Other students echoed this sentiment and remembered their keen pleasure in decorating to their own taste, entertaining other girls with tea and cocoa parties, and just talking with friends over a coal fire. The women reveled in other freedoms that had been largely unknown to them: opportunities for friendships uncontrolled by family prejudices, the leisure to organize their time as they wished (within the constraints of residential hall rules), the luxury of devoting themselves to intellectual pursuits without being thought selfish, and contacts with some of the most distinguished minds of the day. Despite the restrictions that tightly governed their outside behavior, these early students experienced more independence within college walls than they had ever known in their lives— and most had three years in which to cherish it. It’s not surprising that their early accounts sound so ecstatic. They were tasting forbidden fruit and developing a decided preference for it. So, although Miss Wordsworth and Miss Shaw Lefevre took pains to emphasize that their halls were run like traditional families, Emily Davies, never one to indulge in sentimental



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humbug, knew the truth—and the truth was dangerous for one attempting to open a college for women: I will try to be respectful to parents, but how is it possible to describe College life without showing how infinitely pleasanter it will be than home? It is a weak point which I am utterly at a loss to defend. I do not believe that our utmost efforts to poison the students’ lives at College will make them half so miserable as they are at home.17 In addition to all the other pleasures that their collegiate years offered, these young women, like generations of male students before them, savored the beauty of Oxford itself, perhaps remembering the famous lines from Matthew Arnold’s “Thyrsis,” published in 1866: “And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.” Though Oxford is frequently damp, dreary, and cold, memory often bathes it in sunshine or romantically enshrouds it in mist. Few of the early women students were immune to its spell, and they, like Janet Courtney, were captivated by the city’s “lingering medieval charm.” Janet described being thoroughly put out when Maggie Benson (daughter of the archbishop of Canterbury and an LMH student of 1883) returned for a visit and remarked: “I thought Oxford was everything until I went to London, but now I know there is one thing better.”18 Gertrude Bell extolled the loveliness of Oxford and its countryside in numerous letters to her parents. After one glorious May, she captured the essence of what many often felt in one brief phrase: “Oh, oh, oh, this place!”19

Delights and Difficulties of Being Students Many of the early students came from homes where scholarly pursuits were valued, but few had ever been able to indulge their intellectual curiosity as much as they would like. As middle-class daughters, they had social and familial duties that took precedence over solitary study. Now, they gratefully found themselves in an environment where they could manage their own time and where hard work and study were the norm. No one thought them selfish if they sat over their books for hours at a time; being serious about one’s studies was a virtue, not an unwomanly flaw. Gertrude Bell, younger than most of her LMH colleagues and remembered as one of the brightest and most vibrant, typically studied for seven hours a day. Although she sometimes despaired over the amount of reading she had to get through in a week, her delight in her work is evident in lively letters to her parents. She was trying to cram three years’ work into two, so it’s not surprising that she felt overwhelmed at times. Her hard work paid dividends, however. She triumphed with a first in modern history, a distinction never before achieved by a woman in that subject.

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Another who enjoyed the stimulus of hard work was Maggie Benson. In a letter to her mother, she wrote: “My work is so jolly. It is so delicious doing the Greek philosophers.” Despite the schoolgirlish tone, Maggie was no dabbler in philosophical waters. She quickly distinguished herself at Oxford by the ease with which she mastered abstruse concepts. Her philosophy tutor at Keble College had never taught a woman before and assumed he would detect a difference in intellect between her and his male students. Maggie’s “absolute remorselessness” in balancing arguments for and against her philosophical positions astonished him, as well as her powers of analysis. At that time, Maggie was permitted to work only toward the special women’s examination in philosophy, which seemed to her tutor a great injustice; he believed she could easily have held her own with the male examinees. After she got her first in 1886, her tutor complained to his sister: “That wretched ‘Women’s’ Examination: if it had only been Greats! No one will realise how brilliantly she has done.”20 Once she had slogged through the work she had to do for the Women’s First exam, Florence Rich (Somerville 1884) found her science studies much more agreeable. Zoology (then called morphology) was the subject dear to her heart, but this school wasn’t yet opened to women. Professor Edward Poulton of the Zoology Department encouraged her to make special application to the school, believing that it would accept her, but she lost her nerve. I shrank from having this fuss made for me; I dreaded the terrible publicity (!) of being the first woman to take the examination, and the awful humiliation that would ensue if I did not do well.21 Florence opted for chemistry, where she was not the only woman student. She found it difficult, however, to be inconspicuous as a female science student at Oxford, for few women read that subject. Although she enjoyed her work, Florence felt hampered by her isolation. She had virtually no female colleagues with whom to discuss her work, and because of the strict chaperonage rules, she couldn’t turn to her male classmates for advice and support. For Elizabeth Lea, who came to LMH to read English in 1887, the lectures were well worth the trek she had to make between the hall and the AEW lecture rooms, even on cold winter afternoons, but she was discouraged by the unfavorable comments she received on her English literature papers. She had the good fortune, however, to be a student when the language side of the English syllabus first received serious attention. In 1888, Joseph Wright was appointed by the AEW to teach German and Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) grammar. This future professor of comparative philology was an exacting teacher who strove to instill a passion for accuracy in his students. Elizabeth blossomed under his stern but patient tute-



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lage, realizing that “I was being taught as I had never been taught before, and that under this new teacher I was learning not merely a subject set for an examination, but learning how to work at no matter what subject.”22 Even her literature work improved. (She wasn’t the only woman to benefit from Wright’s teaching, for six of his students gained first-class honours in English and modern languages between 1888 and 1890.) The prospect of finals terrified Elizabeth, but she turned the process of studying for them into even more of an ordeal than was usual. For very little money, she bought a four-legged, German-made stool of carved oak on which she sat to study her notes. “Like a monk on a miserare seat, if I went to sleep, I fell off and woke up to continue my vigil.” After such uncomfortable review sessions, she can’t have been heartened by what she saw on one of the tables in the Examination Schools: a drawing of a gravestone with the inscription, “Sacred to my memory which always fails me when most required.”23 Her trials were rewarded, however, with a first, and she eventually replaced Joseph Wright as lecturer in Old and Middle English for the AEW. Despite apprehensions and difficulties, women were eager to accept the challenge of being students at Oxford. Lilian Faithfull (Somerville 1883) came close to the heart of the matter when she wrote: “One can hardly exaggerate the delight of getting beyond elementary work and coming to grips for the first time with a subject and investigating a special field of knowledge, however small it may be.”24 Women were thrilled by the opportunity to grapple with the intricacies of a difficult subject and to pursue learning for its own sake, just as their brothers had been allowed to do. Those early supporters of higher education for women had not been proved wrong in their belief that women yearned for knowledge and skills beyond the ordinary range of drawing-room accomplishments and charitable good works.

Recreation and Friendships These young women took their Oxford work seriously, but they weren’t dreary grinds. Their principals encouraged them to devote part of every afternoon to recreation, for many people were not yet convinced that women’s health could hold up under an intense regimen of study. Elizabeth Wordsworth believed that outdoor exercise was a necessary outlet for youthful energy, which if suppressed might lead girls to express it in frivolous ways. Of course, the times being as they were, young ladies did not have access to many outdoor recreations. Lawn tennis was acceptable, and field hockey soon became permissible. A number of women played hockey with enthusiasm, but the LMH Committee banned it for a time because some members feared that students devoted more attention to the game than to their studies. LMH students, being so near the water, were

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allowed to take the college boat on the river, provided they first passed a swimming test. Walking became one of the most popular pastimes; it required no special skill and could be undertaken without the ubiquitous chaperone. Many students explored the Oxford countryside with college friends, enjoying the intense and free-ranging conversations that seemed to go hand-in-hand with country rambles. For more sedentary pleasures, they formed in-college literary societies, where they might read and discuss Browning’s poetry or Shakespeare’s plays. A joint debating society was initiated in 1885 between the two halls and the Home-Students, and they had lively discussions of topical issues—“That the granting of some measure of legislative independence to Ireland at present will not tend to weaken the position of England as a Great Power” was among them. Wordsworth sometimes composed plays and sketches for her students to perform, and Maggie Benson once wrote to her sister with the startling command, “Send me all the hair we have got (I mean our beards and wigs).”25 Apparently amateur theatricals were not unknown in the archbishop’s home if props were readily available. Students with connections in Oxford, usually through their families, could attend evening dinner parties, and LMH students who dined out unaccompanied by Miss Wordsworth were required to report to her on their return; she took a keen interest in their frocks and their dinner companions. Both Miss Wordsworth and Miss Shaw Lefevre no doubt perused the guest lists of such parties beforehand to ensure they were of an entirely proper composition. Within college, the young women enjoyed the informality of impromptu gatherings in each other’s rooms, where they could relax over tea or cocoa—chatting, laughing, and making friends. One might think that young men would be one of the major distractions of Oxford, but neither they nor the women took much notice of each other (at least according to written accounts). This seeming indifference extended even to acquaintances. Frances Sheldon (Somerville 1880) recalled how one of her fellow students never acknowledged an undergraduate friend from childhood when she encountered him in church and remarked that “it is a way Somerville girls have of being oblivious to all mankind on the street.”26 Admittedly, opportunities for interaction were severely limited for most of the young men and women in Oxford. Except for lectures and seminars, they rarely inhabited the same space, and even at lectures, they studiously avoided each other, often sitting as far apart as possible. The female students couldn’t even talk to undergraduates without a chaperone present, a circumstance calculated to freeze even the boldest of tongues. But, reflecting the conventions of their time and class, most young ladies wouldn’t have considered engaging a member of the opposite sex in conversation, particularly if they hadn’t been formally introduced. If one had a brother at Oxford, one could walk with him alone, but any exchange of



Plain Living and High Thinking

visits, even the most decorous of tea parties, required a chaperone. When an LMH student wanted to give a tea party in her room for a visiting male relative who was headmaster of Wellington (and future dean of Lincoln), Miss Wordsworth refused and would permit the gathering only if it was held in the college drawing room. Janet Courtney remembered the fuss that ensued when she asked leave to study under her brother’s direction in Magdalen. Her brother had offered to coach her privately, stipulating only that the tutoring should be done in his college rooms and promising that no young men would be allowed to attend. There was much discussion about whether to allow a woman student such a privilege, and when permission was granted, it came with the condition that Janet Courtney enter and leave Magdalen by the private fellows’ gate—the back door, so to speak—to minimize the risk of being seen by undergraduates.27 Because most of the early women students did not expect to interact with the young men at Oxford except in a very formal way, they felt no deprivation at the lack of contact. They were too caught up in their new lives at college, and the heady pleasure of forming friendships with women of their own choosing engrossed them. At home, their parents usually strictly controlled and limited their friendships outside the family circle; mothers and fathers felt they had a right, if not a duty, to determine whom their daughters could or could not receive as acquaintances. A residential college offered freedom from such supervision, giving many women their first opportunity to live in close companionship with others their own age. Sharing in the corporate life of the college—eating, working, and playing together—created bonds of friendship that transcended any differences in social position and upbringing. They were bound together by common goals and by the sense of being pioneers; where one’s family fit in the social hierarchy was of less importance. Of course, one could argue that the small band of women who attended LMH and Somerville in the first few years came from such similar environments (and for LMH students, from the same Anglican mold) that their parents would hardly disapprove of their college friends. That is true to a point. Nevertheless, it was still a rare delight to decide for oneself who one’s friends were going to be. And although these early students often shared common social and intellectual backgrounds, they were individuals who had already partially kicked over the traces by being in college at all. They weren’t static creatures who uncritically accepted everything their elders had taught them; they were demonstrating a possibly dangerous measure of independence. Although LMH students were more homogeneous than those at Somerville, they weren’t all pious, obedient daughters of the Church. Students were known to question their faith, and sometimes lose it, at Lady Margaret Hall, and Elizabeth Wordsworth usually dealt calmly and patiently

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with such crises. A student once said to her, “I think it right to inform you, Miss Wordsworth, that I have become an atheist.” She received the unflappable reply, “Never mind dear, we all are at your age. You’ll outgrow it.”28 Gertrude Bell was not a typical LMH student in that she came from a wealthy family of intellectual freethinkers and moved with ease in cosmopolitan society. Miss Wordsworth never entirely approved of her. (In turn, Gertrude was one of the few women, among those who wrote about their student days at LMH, to say anything critical about Miss Wordsworth. Writing to her father about her principal’s “extraordinary theories” and absent-mindedness, she ends, “Much as I like her, I think she is a little mad.”)29 But the other students were captivated by Gertrude Bell’s vivacity and poise. She became best friends with unobtrusive Mary Talbot (LMH 1886), niece of the warden of Keble, whose family was conservative High Anglican in the extreme. Though they didn’t try to minimize their religious differences, their personalities complemented each other. Mary’s quiet self-confidence curbed some of Gertrude’s excessive enthusiasms, while Gertrude’s academic brilliance inspired Mary’s less impressive scholarship. Their friendship continued after their LMH days until Mary died in 1896 giving birth to twins. It is doubtful that they would have ever come together without the benefit of college—their worlds were probably too different to permit it—yet each would say that her life was immeasurably richer for having known the other. Despite the friendships that blossomed, sometimes in surprising quarters, quarrels and petty jealousies were inevitable among people who lived in such close proximity. During Maggie Benson’s years at LMH, students spent much time discussing each other’s character and motives. In one term, however, the pastime got out of hand, and the students focused mainly on each other’s faults and defects. These criticisms would then be passed on, degenerating into who said what about whom. When tempests erupted, a number of students denounced the practice. They wanted everyone to agree only to say nice things about each other. Maggie, who always tried to analyze both sides of an issue, believed it was important to acknowledge shortcomings, declaring that to do otherwise “was a sort of bearing of false witness, and that to ignore people’s faults was only to raise expectations which were bound to be disappointed.” She maintained that discussion of character was “the most interesting thing in the world” but deplored the practice of talking behind someone’s back and then passing on criticisms, for she believed it inevitable that information would be misconstrued during such a process.30 Although Maggie’s LMH colleagues might acknowledge that she could remain detached during character discussions, they were less sure of themselves and agreed, at least in principle, to put an end to the custom.



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Possessive friendships between women were bound to occur in such a cloistered environment, leading to a certain amount of tension and upheaval. Madeleine Shaw Lefevre complained to her sister in 1880 about “sets and cliques which are a perpetual annoyance.”31 Lilian Faithfull remarked on the absurdity of “tragedy queens” who publicly showed their jealousy if their favorites didn’t pay them enough attention. She was honest enough to admit, however, that she suffered some jealous pangs in one of her Somerville friendships. She and another student began spending their Sunday afternoons together reading and talking, and Lilian was furious when a third party one day joined them. When she later voiced her anger at the intrusion, her friend expressed surprise: “But why shouldn’t she come? Don’t you like her?” Lilian was quickly ashamed of her feelings and resolved to put such pettiness behind her.32 Quarrels and jealousies could make life uncomfortable for a time, but learning to cope with them was an important part of these young women’s education. It had long been assumed that some of the more beneficial aspects of men’s Oxford education took place not in the lecture rooms and libraries, but on the cricket field or the river and in their quadrangles. In other words, their social interactions—playing and rowing together or conversing and cheerfully arguing long into the night—were invaluable in giving men the polish, confidence, and maturity to make their way in the world. As yet, no such lordly claims would be made for women, but there is no doubt that the young women students of Oxford valued the liberating experience of collegiate life, with its intellectual discipline and intellectual freedom.

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4 A Turning Point . . . and a Third Sister

T

o those who had worked so hard to organize the Lectures for Ladies, it seemed a wonderful concession when Oxford instituted the special women’s examinations in 1875. There were problems, however. As Edith Pearson (LMH 1879) later explained: “Nobody very clearly understood what was their scope or the standard expected. Consequently it was not easy to bear them very steadily in mind in working.”1 The women’s examinations became more of a known quantity over time, but less than ten years later, many people believed that higher education for women at Oxford was doomed unless women were permitted to take the same examinations as men and under the same conditions. Just as ­Emily Davies had preached for so long, many outside the university, particularly prospective employers, believed that the women’s examinations were not equal in breadth or rigor to the men’s. In 1881, women had been formally admitted to the tripos examinations at Cambridge, and a movement began at Oxford to allow women to take some of the men’s examinations.

Examination Debate In 1883, the AEW Committee passed a resolution requesting the Delegacy of Local Examinations to open men’s honour exams to women, leaving it to the delegates’ discretion to determine which exams to open and under what conditions. When the delegates passed along the AEW proposal to the Hebdomadal Council, it was refused.2 Undaunted, the AEW regrouped and presented the following petition to Council, signed by 122 members of Congregation, Oxford’s legislative body: We, the undersigned Masters of Arts of the University of Oxford, being likewise Members of Congregation, considering the great advantage to women of having their acquirements tested by a known and recognized standard, respectfully petition Council to lay before the university some scheme by which women may be admitted to some, at least, of men’s Honour Examinations.3 46



A Turning Point . . . and a Third Sister

The Hebdomadal Council accepted this request and, on February 13, 1884, gave notice of a statute to be promulgated on February 26.4 This statute would allow the delegacy to open to women honour moderations in classics (the first of two examinations in literae humaniores) and in mathematics, and the final honour schools in mathematics, natural science, and modern history.5 No terms of residence were mentioned, nor did the statute prescribe responsions or any intermediate examinations. The delegacy would simply be empowered to substitute some of the men’s examinations for the special women’s exams. Congregation met to vote on the preamble to the statute on February 26, 1884, and conservative opponents at the meeting quickly voiced their objections. Canon Liddon of Christ Church, who had never favored higher education for women, argued that women were happier when they had indirect power and that this proposal would give them direct power. He also maintained that women were men’s helpmates and should never seek to become their rivals. The senior proctor, still adhering to the notion of woman’s physical and mental inferiority, expressed doubts that women could bear up under the strain of taking the men’s examinations. On the other side, however, the warden of Merton couldn’t understand why all the men’s examinations shouldn’t be open to women, and Professor Dicey of Trinity defended the proposal by saying that it was “both generous and just” to allow women a “small share of what men were entitled to.”6 Congregation passed the preamble by a vote of 100 to 46 and on March 11 approved the statute by 107 to 72. Nevertheless, the battle lines had been drawn. Convocation was scheduled to vote on the statute on April 29, and in the interim, both sides circulated letters and fly sheets, many of which appeared in the Times and the Guardian.7 On April 16, the Times printed a long anonymous article in which the author, presumably male, outlined a number of objections to the statute. First, because residence was not required for women, the author feared that undergraduates would eventually have no residence requirements and that the university would become merely an examining body. He then questioned whether the intellectual sphere was suitable for “the more refined, delicate and domestic nature of women” and worried that competition would “involve danger to their health, and so to their fitness to discharge the duties of family life.” In the same vein, he expressed concerned that, if all final schools were eventually opened to women, they would be exposed to the “heathen literature of the ancient world and modern physiological research,” probably to their moral detriment. The author also objected to the possibility that people might vote for the statute just because Cambridge had officially opened examinations to women, thus giving women there advantages over those at Oxford. He felt that Oxford shouldn’t damage its own ancient system just to emulate Cambridge.8

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Supporters of the statute felt most compelled to answer the first objection: “In the case of men, the statutes of the University require residence for degrees only, and not for admission to examination. As there is no question of degrees for women, it seemed natural not to impose a restriction on them which is not imposed on men.”9 As Annie Rogers put it in Degrees by Degrees, her delightful 1938 book about the campaign to admit women to full membership in the university, the residence question had a definite ironical twist: The opponents did not wish to encourage women to come to Oxford, but they complained that residence was not to be compulsory. The supporters had no desire to encourage examination without residence and yet found themselves advocating it.10 The war of words continued as the Convocation vote drew nearer. More letters flowed in to the London papers. Thomas Case, future president of Corpus Christi, feared that examination standards would gradu­ ally have to be lowered because women would not be able to keep up with the men. He predicted catastrophic effects on Oxford life, warning that the university would lose its virility and no longer be “a school of manliness.” Arthur Sidgwick, classics professor at Corpus Christi and a longtime supporter of women in Oxford (brother to Henry Sidgwick at Cambridge), pleaded that, since women students had put in all the hard work for honours, they should at least get some benefit for it. Dr. John Percival, president of Trinity College (and a member of Somerville’s founding committee), argued for the practicality of the proposal, maintaining that it would relieve the delegacy of the expense and bother of producing duplicate examinations for the “comparatively small body of candidates whose subjects are the same and whose preparation has been virtually the same.”11 Finally, April 29 arrived, and interested ladies and undergraduates besieged the Sheldonian Theatre, where Convocation met.12 The former group was admitted to the galleries, but the young men were at first refused admission and became highly indignant. They appeared on the verge of attempting to take the area by storm when they were at last permitted into an upper gallery where, considering the agitation that had preceded their entry, they settled down and behaved well. Such a large assembly of masters for Convocation hadn’t been seen in years. There was no debate, and the masters proceeded to vote. When the result was announced, 464 for the statute and 321 against, the audience greeted the news with enthusiasm. Elizabeth Wordsworth was not present for the vote but heard the results as she returned from a country walk, her arms full of fritillaries. She said later that the sight of those flowers forever reminded her of “the turning-point in our history.”13



A Turning Point . . . and a Third Sister

Somerville held a celebratory party when the vote was reported, and for some years afterward, the date marked a major holiday in the college calendar. In her brief history of Somerville from 1879 to 1945, Vera Farnell reported that “this first step on the part of the university to recognize the existence of women was received with acclamation in Somerville and seemed to give a new life to the Hall.”14 A young Somerville student, Margaret Seward (1881), immediately entered for mathematical moderations and took a second in 1884. When she took her final examination in chemistry one year later, she was rewarded with a first. Annie Rogers believed that two factors influenced the favorable vote. First, Oxford did not want to fall behind Cambridge in directing the education of young women. If Oxford didn’t follow Cambridge in admitting women to the men’s examinations, there was no doubt that the latter’s certificate would have more value in the nonacademic world. Few Oxford men wanted Cambridge to take the lead in anything—even if they had reservations about whether women should be at their university at all. Second, the Anglican tone of Lady Margaret Hall led many of the clergy present to vote for the statute. They knew their daughters might have to earn their own living, and they wanted them to be as fully prepared as possible to do so.15 Elizabeth Wordsworth remembered a cartoon that circulated after the vote: There was the ascetic celibate clergyman with a shocked expression on his face, as he shouted, “Non placet!” and the country parson with a little girl under each arm, vociferating, “Placet!”16 An important victory had been won, but Dean J. W. Burgon fired an additional conservative broadside from New College Chapel on June 8. The dean preached a sermon in which he railed against the statute as against the laws of God. Referring to women directly, he ended: “Inferior to us God made you, and inferior to the end of time you will remain. But you are none the worse off for that.” The congregation responded with laughter. In fact, an LMH student wrote her mother that the sermon kept “the congregation in fits of laughter apparently nearly all through. They really laughed quite audibly.”17 This reaction didn’t stop the dean from publishing his sermon under the title, “To Educate Young Women Like Young Men and with Young Men—A Thing Inexpedient and Immodest.” In the April 30, 1884, issue of the Oxford Magazine, the dean was chastised for claiming that female students at Oxford had aroused disgust by aping the manners, language, slang, and swagger of undergraduates. The magazine called his accusation “monstrous and unfounded,” maintaining that the “perfect behaviour” of women students “is a matter of common knowledge—is a matter, we had almost said, of notoriety in Oxford.”18 Opponents of the examination statute who employed the “thin end of

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the wedge” argument proved to be good forecasters. Women increasingly gained access to college lectures and university laboratories. The barriers to exams tottered. Responsions was opened in 1886 and the final honour school in literae humaniores (greats) in 1888. Within ten years, the examinations in arts and music, jurisprudence, theology, Oriental studies, and medicine were all opened to women. By 1894, women students could take the remaining examinations leading to a BA degree (although the official degree was withheld from them for some time to come). The delegacy continued to furnish special women’s examinations in English language and literature and modern languages until the university officially recognized these schools in 1894 and 1903, respectively.

An Anomalous Situation Women had taken an important step forward in 1884, but the statute created a rather curious situation for years to come. Oxford’s Examination Statutes clearly stated that only a member of the university could take examinations, even though women (i.e., nonmembers) were obviously taking them. The university, though allowing the delegacy to admit women to degree examinations, made no attempt to supervise the conditions under which women sat for examinations or paid their fees. The irony was not lost on one observer: In many ways the whole position of women in Oxford was thus a stage secret. Students attended lectures, were taught by University tutors, and took the Degree Examinations, achieving a high level of “Honours”: but the university was officially blind to their existence, laying down no regulations as to their residence, discipline, or education.19 Theoretically, women could come to Oxford, live where they liked, behave improperly, and still obtain certificates proving they had completed certain examinations. It is surprising that those who objected to women students in Oxford wouldn’t have tried to protect the university from such a possibility by encouraging legislation to exercise authority over them. Actually, there was little cause for alarm. The AEW did the university’s work for it and ensured that women students were organized and controlled, even those who were not in residence at Somerville or Lady Margaret Hall. In 1888, for example, the AEW introduced an official system of registration. Up to this point, no clear distinction existed between women who were pursuing a regular course of study and/or working toward examinations and those who were merely sitting in on a few lectures. Now, however, regular women students were designated members of the AEW (in addition to being members of their own societies), with their names, dates, academic work, and examinations recorded. Registration performed



A Turning Point . . . and a Third Sister

several useful functions: It stood as a permanent record of the work of women students; it identified registered students as a recognized body in Oxford; and it provided helpful information for prospective employers. (When women were finally allowed to take the BA degree in 1920, they found the register a useful tool in proving their qualifications.) Far from attracting young women with lax morals and no respect for authority, Oxford beckoned to serious students who were obedient to the firm hand of discipline exerted by the AEW, Elizabeth Wordsworth, Madeleine Shaw Lefevre, and Bertha Johnson. Along with the lack of recognition came a certain amount of freedom to develop without consulting university authorities. A prominent example was the establishment of St. Hugh’s in 1886—the brainchild of Elizabeth Wordsworth and the third women’s society to open in Oxford.

St. Hugh’s: Life on a Shoestring Many of the women who attended the fledgling colleges of Oxford and Cambridge were destined to enter the teaching profession, one of the few careers then open to women. Luckily, the demand for trained teachers and qualified headmistresses was high, owing to the steadily growing number of high schools and boarding schools for girls being established in the late nineteenth century. Yet, women who might have to support themselves as teachers if they did not marry—daughters of middle-class professionals such as parsons, solicitors, doctors, schoolmasters, and service officers— could rarely afford an Oxford education. Lady Margaret Hall’s yearly fee of seventy pounds and Somerville’s of sixty pounds excluded some of the women who needed higher education the most. Elizabeth Wordsworth had long been concerned about this problem, particularly for clergymen’s daughters, but felt she could not accept many girls at reduced rates because LMH had to husband its resources. When in 1886 Miss Wordsworth received an unexpected windfall of six hundred pounds from her father’s estate, she knew exactly what she wanted to do with it—establish a hall where a few women of modest means could live simply and economically, doing the housework themselves, while pursuing the same course of study as the other women students at Oxford. In other words, the lower fees—forty-five pounds a year—would mean economy in living, not in education. To that end, she rented and furnished a semidetached, eight-room house at 25 Norham Road, not far from LMH, and called it St. Hugh’s as a tribute to her father. St. Hugh, like her father, had once been bishop of Lincoln, and until 1542 Oxford had been included in Lincoln’s diocese. Although the same religious principles would guide St. Hugh’s and LMH, there was to be no formal connection between the two establishments, which no doubt suited both Miss Wordsworth and the LMH Committee. She wanted a

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free hand in setting up this new venture, without the restraints imposed by a governing committee, and the LMH Committee did not want to assume any financial burdens for St. Hugh’s. Thus, the new hall was begun as a one-woman show with no group of well-wishers prepared to devote time and money to its success. (Over time this arrangement proved impractical; Miss Wordsworth eventually found it necessary to share financial and administrative responsibilities.) Because Elizabeth Wordsworth wished St. Hugh’s to be an Anglican establishment, she not surprisingly turned to the milieu she knew best, the world of scholars and bishops, to find a principal capable of providing sound religious and moral guidance. She tapped for the position Charlotte Anne Elizabeth Moberly, whose recently deceased father had been headmaster at Winchester and then bishop of Salisbury (the bishopric to which Elizabeth Wordsworth’s brother John would succeed), despite her doubts that Miss Moberly would be capable of running an economical household, fearing that “episcopal training, as I have found to my cost, is not the best thing in the world for temporal, whatever it may be for spiritual, oversight.”20 Outweighing these doubts was Miss Wordsworth’s confidence that Anne Moberly had the ability to impart the correct religious tone to St. Hugh’s. Miss Moberly, who had been wondering what to do with her life since her father’s death, accepted the challenge after hearing a ghostly voice that seemed to point her in that direction. Many assumed that Miss Moberly had second sight (finding full expression in her famous vision at Versailles in 1901; see Chapter 9), and it would be interesting to know whether Elizabeth Wordsworth was aware of this aspect of her personality when she invited her to Oxford. Anne Moberly grew up in one of those enormous Victorian households that constituted a world unto itself —she was one of fifteen children. Bishop Moberly was the undisputed head, exacting obedience, self­discipline, and not a little fear from his large brood (apparently his wife was known to have addressed him by his Christian name only once in front of others). He imparted deep religious values to his children but, like Bishop Wordsworth, allowed both sons and daughters full access to his extensive library. Anne Moberly studied Greek and Hebrew because she wanted to read the Bible in the original languages. The family was also intensely musical (two string quartets could be made up from the family alone), and Miss Moberly carried her love of music to St. Hugh’s, forming musical groups within the hall that resembled the entertainments she had known in her Salisbury home. She lacked Elizabeth Wordsworth’s easy manner, being shy and introverted but, in more than twenty-nine years of service, developed her embryonic hall into a full-fledged and respected collegiate institution. St. Hugh’s beginnings were certainly humble enough. In October 1886, Miss Moberly and four students set up residence in a sparsely furnished



A Turning Point . . . and a Third Sister

house with peeling wallpaper and no funds for interior decoration. The dining room did double duty as a communal study, the garden was almost nonexistent, and the rooms proved to be icy in winter. One of the original four students also remembered another drawback: A young lady who lived next door practiced the piano from morning until night, apparently in preparation for an examination of some sort. “This was not conducive to study of classics and mathematics. How often did we desire to bombard the partition wall and lay the enemy low with the poker. We, who were also examination candidates, ought to have had a fellow feeling but human nature has its limitations.”21 Miss Moberly only had one room for her personal use, but she seemed indifferent to beauty and comfort, which was probably fortunate under the circumstances. She also took no interest in food, and although she employed a cook, the cuisine was plain and often downright bad. Miss Moberly engaged two maids to help run the house, but students were expected to make their own beds, put the kettles on for tea, wash their cups and saucers, and brush and mend their clothes. Under these Spartan conditions, St. Hugh’s began to grow, and when Elizabeth Wordsworth rented the other half of 25 Norham Road (number 24), the two houses could accommodate ten students. The college needed still more room, and in 1888 Wordsworth found a new home for St. Hugh’s at 17 Norham Gardens, a spacious house almost next door to LMH. Because she only secured the leasehold just before students were to arrive for Michaelmas term, there was a scramble to get everything ready for them. Anne Moberly and the servants scurried down Fyfield Road (which connects Norham Gardens with Norham Road) carrying armloads of miscellaneous household items, dropping bits and pieces in the middle of the street, while vans transported the larger furniture. There was no time to inform students about the change of address, and they were startled to find a To Let sign in the window of their college. Because it was dark when most of them arrived, they could not see the notice attached to the gate directing them to their new residence, “so a melancholy procession of cabs crawled down Fyfield Rd. disconsolately looking for St. Hugh’s.”22 No one remained lost for long, however, and their alarm turned to pleasure when they found the new location. The Norham Gardens house, which could hold twelve to thirteen students, had more study rooms, a pleasant garden overlooking the university parks, and a tennis court. It was also near the river, which meant that students could have a college boat. A wing added three years later made room for twelve more students, along with a dining room and a separate area for chapel. Clearly, St. Hugh’s fulfilled a need. Were the lower fees responsible for its growth, or were many more women hoping to study in Oxford than previously could have been accommodated? That’s a hard question to answer. Until World War I, most of St. Hugh’s students came from solidly

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middle-class backgrounds, but some were better off than others. Of the first four students who took up residence at 25 Norham Road, only one was the daughter of a parson—the group for which Elizabeth Wordsworth hoped to provide. The proportion increased, however, so that forty-three of the first hundred students were clergymen’s daughters. Most students during St. Hugh’s first twenty-five years embarked on careers after leaving Oxford, but whether out of necessity or desire is not clear. The educational arena offered the most job opportunities for St. Hugh’s women (and for women in the other Oxford societies), and the college became known as the training ground for headmistresses, having produced six by 1899. (The 1913 College Annual Report lists seventeen headmistresses and 114 assistant mistresses among former students.)23 A number also took up church work, which is hardly surprising given that many had been raised in religious households and were drawn to St. Hugh’s both for its modest fees and its Church of England association. In comments to family and friends, Elizabeth Wordsworth sometimes hinted that the LMH Committee (renamed the LMH Council in 1893) imposed unwelcome restraints, and, as mentioned earlier, she wanted no such curbs at St. Hugh’s. Although she finally felt compelled to set up a governing committee in 1891, she gave it no real authority and relinquished very little personal control. It must have been an uncomfortable situation for Anne Moberly and the committee members, for they were powerless to stop Miss Wordsworth from doing what she wanted, as happened in 1893 when she decided, without consulting the governing committee, to turn St. Hugh’s into St. Hugh’s Hostel and amalgamate it with LMH, an idea she proposed to the LMH Council. By this time, St. Hugh’s was not only paying its own way but also achieving a margin of around two hundred pounds a year, and Elizabeth Wordsworth wanted the surplus to benefit both St. Hugh’s and LMH. The hostel students would still pay lower fees than LMH students but could use some of the amenities that LMH already possessed. Additionally, Miss Wordsworth just liked the idea of hostels for women’s education. Her ideal college would not be housed in one large building but composed of small groups of students living in separate houses under the watchful eye of housemistresses. Only in this way could the intimacy of a family atmosphere be preserved—an intimacy that she greatly valued. By incorporating St. Hugh’s, LMH could expand its numbers without expanding its original form. Fortunately for the future of St. Hugh’s, the LMH Council vetoed the proposal, expressing reluctance to dismantle an institution that so successfully served women of modest means. Self-interest was also at work in the council’s decision. Members felt that LMH would lose academically by such a merger, because St. Hugh’s students were more likely to take pass examinations only, unable to justify the time and money needed for the



A Turning Point . . . and a Third Sister

longer honour courses. If the two groups became one, the council feared, “the tone and average standard would not be quite so select and high.”24 After this defeat, Elizabeth Wordsworth loosened her grip on St. Hugh’s. She may simply have lost interest in trying to be actively involved in two colleges or she may have realized that she couldn’t continue to bear the financial responsibility alone (or maybe a combination of the two). A trust deed executed in 1895 assigned the property of St. Hugh’s to four trustees, Miss Wordsworth being one of the four. This group, named the St. Hugh’s Council, became the governing body of the college. The trust deed, which more firmly established the college as an independent institution, described St. Hugh’s as “an Academic House conducted according to the principles of the Church of England.”25 Anne Moberly no doubt welcomed St. Hugh’s more stable position and Elizabeth Wordsworth’s reduced involvement, for she was not above feeling jealous and resentful of the status difference between the two colleges. We don’t know whether Miss Moberly ever learned of the snub behind the LMH Council’s veto of the proposed merger, but she had privately expressed the view that “Wordsworth had founded St. Hugh’s to be a rubbish-dump for LMH,” although to anyone but her closest associates she rarely voiced her resentment.26 A hint of her true feelings comes through in a letter she wrote to Bertha Johnson on the latter’s resignation as secretary of the AEW in 1894. Miss Moberly expressed her gratitude that Mrs. Johnson had always believed in the hall: It has been chiefly owing to your constant and effective kindness that St. Hugh’s has been able to hold its own so long. . . . For my part, I could not have gone on all these years but for yours and Mrs. Toynbee’s kindness. . . . The burden has again and again seemed intolerable and would have been so altogether but that you took the Hall under your protection and were so personally kind to me.27 From the beginning of her tenure as principal, Anne Moberly behaved as though St. Hugh’s was a legitimate Oxford women’s college and not a poor substitute, an attitude that no doubt enabled St. Hugh’s to survive. She established traditions such as the musical societies for which St. Hugh’s became known and her Sunday evening lectures, most famously on the Book of Revelation. Though she had received no formal education, she possessed a scholarly bent and knew what standards of scholarship ought to be. She was eminently respectable and stamped her upper-middle-class values on her somewhat scruffy establishment. As she said of her appointment to head St. Hugh’s: My hope was that if good manners, good temper, and good sense did not fail, I should be helped to pull through. I like girls, and could gen-

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erally get on well with them, but I could not pose as superior in mind or purpose to anyone. My ruling principle was to be entirely myself: the strain of trying to be anything more would have broken me down.28 Anne Moberly probably never enjoyed her role as principal as much as Elizabeth Wordsworth did, nor was she at ease in the social situations that her LMH counterpart relished. Nevertheless, these two bishops’ daughters, though temperamentally so different, drew on their slightly old-fashioned ideas of how young women should conduct themselves in this new world of higher education to enable their institutions to become an accepted part of academic Oxford.

5 First Adventurers, 1879–1889

A

lthough the Oxford women’s societies can single out many   women of distinction among their students, they produced a re   markable crop during their first decade of precarious existence. We rarely hear about these women today—they are found in few history books, with the possible exceptions of Cornelia Sorabji and Gertrude Bell—but they deserve special recognition. Quite apart from what they achieved in later life, these women were remarkable for going to college at all. They defied the prevailing sentiment of the times that it was selfish and unseemly for a young woman to put her own interests and dreams ahead of duty to others. She should remain at home, submissive to the will of her parents, while awaiting the opportunity to be submissive to the will of her husband. The first students at Oxford (and at other universities in Britain) broke free from this societal straitjacket. They showed courage in the face of much opposition in claiming the right to intellectual freedom and in refusing to accept the limited and sheltered lives of women of their day. Lilian Faithfull described the impulses that motivated her and the other early women students: The novel excitement and independence of life offered to us great attractions. We were fired with the sentiment of the explorer: new seas were to be charted by women; new avenues of usefulness were before us; and, with something of the arrogance of Bacon, we cried, “We have taken all knowledge to be our province.”1

Career Opportunities The optimism of these early students was impressive, not least because women had few career choices in the 1880s. They encountered many roadblocks to “avenues of usefulness.” These students were particularly noteworthy in that they found ways to lead active and useful lives following their Oxford experience, despite the cultural and professional barriers that 57

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confronted them. Teaching was one road open to them, and many took it, responding to the demand for university-trained women to staff the increasing number of girls’ schools throughout the country and even abroad. For years, teaching had been the last resort of the destitute, but the revolution in girls’ education that began in the 1850s and the subsequent rise in standards changed the situation. Teaching was now recognized as a profession—a legitimate avenue of employment—and one that required proper training. Again, Lilian Faithfull offers insight: Even school teaching was regarded with respect, not dismay. Its living wage, its opportunities for promotion, its possibilities of putting into practice all kinds of reforms and of infecting others with our own enthusiasm, made most of us eager to get posts and content to keep them for years.2 A large percentage of the women who came to Oxford between 1879 and 1889 entered the teaching profession at the secondary level, at least for some part of their lives. Many taught in the high schools established by the Girls’ Public Day School Trust or in private independent schools. During that first decade, 131 students were admitted to Somerville, and fifty-four (41 percent) later went into teaching. This trend began early. Seven of the first twelve students became teachers, and almost all rose to the level of assistant mistress or headmistress.3 Of that group, Margaret Roberts had an exceptional career as headmistress of Bradford Girls’ Grammar School. She served in her post for thirty-three years and fostered a high level of devotion and service to the school. Lady Margaret Hall students followed a similar path. Of the 124 students listed in the LMH register during the same period, forty-eight (39 percent) took up teaching. The number of teachers from LMH’s 1879 group did not, however, match Somerville’s; only two out of the first nine were listed as teachers, with one achieving the rank of headmistress.4 St. Hugh’s does not publish a student register; therefore, specific details about students’ lives between 1886 (the date of founding) and 1889 are not readily available. It is safe to say, however, that teaching was the preferred profession for St. Hugh’s women, and the first four students initiated the tradition. Each initially chose a career in education after leaving Oxford. There was no register for Home-Students until 1888, but earlier students could be listed if they desired. Twenty-two names appear in the register for the first decade, even though a larger number were certainly part of the society during that period. Of that group, two became headmistresses, and eight taught in high schools or private schools.5 Although more women were going to college in the 1880s, few considered careers in higher education. That profession was still in its infancy. In a study of women academics in England between 1870 and 1930, Fer-



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nanda Perrone looked at Cambridge (Girton and Newnham), Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall, Somerville, and the AEW), and London (Bedford College and Westfield College) and calculated that only seventeen women were employed as university teachers in 1883–84. (They were, of course, teaching only women.) As more colleges opened their doors to female students, however, women who had been to university were needed to teach and supervise them. By 1894, Perrone reported, the number of women university teachers had risen to fifty-one.6 At the Oxford women’s colleges, the first positions open to women were more administrative than academic. University men, working through the AEW, carried out most of the tutoring and lecturing to women. With increased numbers of women students, however, the principals needed assistance in running halls of residence, and they usually turned to former students for help. Often, these women were designated vice-principals, and they undertook a variety of jobs in college, including some tutoring work if needed. Four of Somerville’s students from the first decade stayed on as assistants and tutors. Lilla Haigh, one of the pioneering twelve, had the distinction of being Somerville’s first resident tutor, a position she retained for four years (1882–86) before going into secondary education. Edith Argles and Edith Pearson, two of the first group of nine at LMH, served as vice-principals of their college (1883–89 and 1888–1902, respectively), while a third, Winifred Cobbe, acted as bursar between 1900 and 1902. A number of former students remained at their colleges for many years, assuming more academic responsibilities as the halls developed residential tutorial staffs. Some Oxford women from that first decade who were not inclined to go into education found their vocation in social work, often through the settlement movement that began in the 1880s. Settlements were residential houses set up in city slums, where educated young men and women devoted themselves to charitable and philanthropic work among the working classes. These settlements were not coresidential, and men and women often had somewhat different reasons for working in them. The male settlers were high-minded idealists; they wanted to bridge the gap between privileged and poor by sharing their culture with the working classes and by fostering personal friendships. Men working in settlements felt the experience of seeing life from another angle would help them if they chose careers in law, religion, or government, which many did. Women settlers, though idealistic, were usually more practical minded and focused their attention almost solely on feminine issues. They established girls’ clubs and child centers and assisted poor women with all aspects of prenatal and postnatal care. Many women settlers viewed social work or social service as their primary occupation, not as a stepping-stone to another career, and their settlement experience constituted a training ground for systematic social work. Regardless of whether the residents wanted to enter the

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field as professionals or volunteers, they gained increased social awareness through dealing with people of all classes, local governments, and national bureaucracies. Writing about women’s settlements, Martha Vicinus remarked that they “appealed most to those colleges and schools that emphasized the womanly virtues of public life.”7 It is not surprising, therefore, that LMH students took an active role in the work, for Elizabeth Wordsworth had long espoused practical help for the poor. In 1887, a Women’s University Settlement was established in London by various women’s colleges, and Edith Argles became one of its first heads. She was also instrumental in founding the LMH Settlement in 1897. Edith Pearson guided this settlement for eight years, and she and Edith Argles are credited with inspiring many young women from LMH to engage in social service work. Many settlements had a specific religious affiliation, as was the case with the LMH Settlement, and a number of students were probably drawn to them for that reason. Others who wanted even more direct involvement with religion became missionaries, members of Anglican sisterhoods, and teachers in schools that were closely affiliated with a religious institution. One even gave her life in the service of her work. Edith Coombs, who attended Somerville between 1881 and 1885, went to China in 1897 to teach in a mission school. During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, a mob burned down her school, and Edith was killed while trying to rescue two of her Chinese students from the fire. A Coombs Scholarship and Coombs Prizes were later established in Somerville as memorials to her. Former Oxford students from the first decade also became writers and turned out an impressive number of books and articles, ranging from the scholarly to the less serious. Kate Downing, one of Somerville’s 1879 pioneers, worked as a journalist at a time when that profession had few women. She served on the editorial staff of the Leamington Spa news­ paper for twelve years, worked as a foreign correspondent in France, and contributed numerous articles to national periodicals. (Works by other women will be discussed later in this chapter.) Oxford women did not confine themselves to the British Isles after college but wandered far afield, even into some of the most remote corners of the globe, as we will see. They explored areas where genteel Englishwomen had rarely been seen, and they did so wearing clothing of the period, which must have been a burden while riding horseback, climbing mountains, and camping in tents. The roads that this first decade of women college students traveled were not always clearly signposted; the women often had to find their own direction if they tried to make careers outside of teaching. Apart from the philanthropic and religious work, writing, and traveling that occupied many, an intrepid few ventured into professions where women were almost unknown, such as law and business. They were not always welcome.



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Many of these pioneers heard comments similar to the one directed at Janet Courtney when she took her first post in London: “In my earlier professional life I was often told that no girl with a father who could keep her had any right to enter a profession.” The First World War largely put an end to that kind of thinking, but Janet Courtney had been an optimist early on: “I am a great believer in the justice of the world. Wait long enough, and causes bring about their inevitable result. You can’t fake history or camouflage an economic situation for more than a little while.”8

Marriage Oxford women not only were going off in directions that made people uncomfortable but also were detouring around the one road that society thought most proper for them—the one that led to marriage. Many Oxford women from the first decade of students did not marry, and indeed, the rate of marriage was low for all college-educated women in Britain at this time. Alice Gordon, author of an 1895 article entitled “The AfterCareers of University-Educated Women,” examined reports from Girton, Newnham, Somerville, Royal Holloway College (London), and Alexandra College (Dublin) for the years 1871 to 1893 and concluded that only 14 percent of the students had married (208 out of a total of 1,486).9 (Of course, the women in her sample who were in college in the late 1880s and early 1890s might have married after her report was published.) In the 1959 Somerville student register, 42 of the 131 students (32 percent) in college between 1879 and 1889 were listed as married, and the 1990 LMH register noted a marriage rate of 33 percent (41 of 124) for the same period. (Again, no specific figures are available for St. Hugh’s and the HomeStudents.) The low marriage rate elicited much concern among certain segments of society, particularly among parents who were considering college for their daughters. Opponents of higher education for women used the statistics as proof that men did not want to marry educated women for fear that they would not be docile wives and tender mothers. Elizabeth Wordsworth, although innately conservative about womanly virtues and duties, refused to accept this idea and countered with the question: “Why should stupidity and ignorance be taken as a qualification for married life?”10 She was also aware of an issue that these critics conveniently neglected to address: There were not enough men to go around. College women largely belonged to a class of society in which marriageable women outnumbered marriageable men, for reasons discussed in Chapter 1. Women from the middle and upper-middle class were therefore already less likely to marry than women from either the working class or upper class, regardless of whether they went to college. Not wanting to be a burden on their families as dependent daughters, many of these women sought paid employment,

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particularly teaching, but knew they needed an education to qualify for the best posts. Although Elizabeth Wordsworth always hoped that her students would marry if they wanted to, she realized that “independence and self-reliance are forced upon so many women sooner or later in life that it is well they should be early prepared to cultivate them.”11 Most women had to choose teaching as their road to independence, but if they became teachers, they usually did not become wives. For one thing, they were rarely permitted to be both: If women teachers married, they were almost always forced to resign to make way for women who had no husband’s income to depend on. Women with a strong vocation for teaching had to make a choice between career and marriage. Only nine of the fifty-four Somervillians who went into education ever married, and the proportion was even lower for LMH: seven of forty-eight. One contemporary writer commented: “If a mother sends her daughter to one of the universities, she is more likely to become a teacher than a wife.”12 Teachers also typically ended up teaching in schools for girls, a situation that offered few opportunities to meet eligible men, as Barbara L. Hutchins, social reformer and women’s advocate, observed in a 1913 article: “There is no station in life (save that of nun) so inimical to marriage as that of resident teacher in a girl’s school.”13 A number of educated women deliberately chose to remain single, not because the few men available now regarded them as unfit for the role of wife and mother nor because they were cloistered in girls’ schools. They had already embarked on a nontraditional path by going to college and were not prepared to step back into what one commentator described as “the ignoble futility of many women’s lives and the parasitism of their economic position.”14 College had given them the freedom to exercise their intellects and allowed them a measure of personal autonomy; they did not want to lose what they had gained. Of course, one might wonder what was cause and what was effect. Did the experience of going to college allow these women to achieve the independence they sought, or did the experience create a desire for independence they had not previously known? There is possibly some truth behind each question. It is also likely true that college gave a number of these women the courage to find personal fulfillment outside the roles that society had deemed suitable for them.

Notable Lives Only a handful of biographies and autobiographies cover the lives of the women who attended Oxford between 1879 and 1889, but some details appear in other sources, such as obituaries, biographical dictionaries, and college histories. There is not a wealth of information, yet enough to document an impressive list of women who deserve special mention. Each of the women’s societies had its roll of honor.



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Somerville Few women among the early students were able to combine marriage and a career; one or the other had to be relinquished. An exception was Julia Arnold Huxley, who married, raised a family, and then founded a successful girls’ school. The blood of educators flowed through her veins. Her grandfather, Thomas Arnold, achieved lasting fame as headmaster of Rugby and was venerated by Thomas Hughes in the popular novel about Rugby, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857). Although Julia’s uncle Matthew is best known as a poet, he too was deeply interested in educational issues and served as an inspector of schools for thirty-five years. Julia was also the sister of the novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward, whose influence on women’s education in Oxford has already been noted. Julia began as a Home-Student (her mother lived in Oxford), transferred to Somerville in 1880, and took a first in English in 1882. She married Leonard Huxley in 1885, thus combining two illustrious nineteenth-century British pedigrees. Her father-in-law, T. H. Huxley, was one of the most influential thinkers of his day, and his views on religion, science, education, and philosophy had a profound impact. Julia established an experimental girls’ school in 1902 that she called Prior’s Field, and from the start, she attempted to give her students more than they could find in textbooks. When the girls read Shakespeare’s plays, Julia took them to London to see the plays performed. When they studied ancient history, she made sure they were exposed to exhibits at the British Museum. Such an approach to education was rare in those days, as was the environment that Julia created in her school. As one of her former pupils remarked: “The freedom given to us at Prior’s Field from the earliest days was very exceptional in girls’ schools at that time.”15 Her unorthodox methods clearly struck a responsive chord in parents, for the school attracted many students. Unfortunately, she did not have much time to enjoy her success, for she died of cancer in 1908 before the age of fifty. Two of her children went on to distinguish themselves in the Arnold and Huxley traditions of literature and science: Aldous as a novelist and Julian as a zoologist. Margaret, her only daughter, became a Somervillian and an educator like her mother, attending the college from 1918 to 1920. Several Somervillians not only were pioneering students of higher edu­ cation in Oxford but also were pioneers in the profession. One of the first, Margaret Seward, came to Somerville in 1881 and promptly went to the top of the list in several categories. She was the first woman to enter for mathematical moderations when that school opened to women in 1884, earning a second. She achieved a more important distinction a year later: the first female student to earn a first in natural science (chemistry). Margaret taught at Somerville and Royal Holloway College in London before being appointed tutor and lecturer in chemistry and mathematics in the Ladies Department of King’s College, London, in 1896, positions she held

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for eighteen years. She married in 1891 and, uncommonly for women academics of that time, was able to continue her university work after marriage.16 Florence Rich, another science student, was offered a scholarship to Somerville in 1884, but her parents took some persuading to allow her to accept it. She was the eldest of five children, and a favorite aunt thought Florence very selfish not to remain at home. The aunt forgave her a few years later, however, when Florence was able to command a salary of seventy pounds a year in her first post as a science teacher.17 She founded her own school in Leicester in 1906, and it is said that she inspired many students with her love of natural science. In 1922, she went to Queen Mary College, London, as a research assistant and earned a considerable reputation for her work on freshwater algae. Alice Bruce and Jane Kirkaldy entered Somerville in 1887 and remained in Oxford for many years. Alice Bruce was the daughter of Lord Aberdare, who became president of University College, Cardiff, the first Welsh college to admit women, in 1883, on the same terms as men. She served as Somerville’s vice-principal from 1898 to 1929 and as French tutor from 1913 to 1929. On her retirement, she was able to claim that she had held every office in Somerville, under varying conditions, except tutor of science and of classics. In 1891, Jane Kirkaldy took a first in zoology at a time when almost no women were in that school and stayed on in Oxford for thirty-five years. She acted as science tutor to all the women science students, for there were not enough women at any one college reading science to justify a resident tutor in those days. At Somerville’s jubilee cele­ bration in 1929, she, Alice Bruce, and two other women were named the first honorary fellows of the college. Ethel Hurlbatt came to Somerville in 1888 and in 1892 accepted the principalship of Aberdare Hall, the university residence for women at University College, Cardiff. Under her guidance, the hall flourished, and she fostered a strong corporate identity. She was appointed principal of Bedford College, London, in 1898, a position she held for eight years before moving to Montreal. From 1906 to 1929, Ethel Hurlbatt served as warden of the Royal Victoria College, McGill University. Her sister Kate, who also studied at Somerville (1884–87), succeeded her as principal of Aberdare Hall in 1898 and remained there for thirty-six years. Lilian Faithfull became well known as an educator after leaving Somerville with a first in English in 1887. She began her career as a lecturer at Royal Holloway College in 1889 but resigned in 1894 to become viceprincipal of the Ladies Department of King’s College, London. During her thirteen-year tenure, she developed the struggling department into a thriving academic community. A keen hockey player at Oxford, she promoted the sport at King’s, and one former student believed that the hockey club was primarily responsible for the strong sense of unity that prevailed (al-



First Adventurers, 1879–1889

though the student remembered exciting unwelcome attention from people on the street who saw her carrying her hockey stick).18 In 1907, Lilian was appointed principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, the position long associated with Dorothea Beale. For fifteen years, she ably carried on in Miss Beale’s footsteps, but her retirement from the college didn’t slow her down. For thirty more years, she was actively engaged as a social worker and as one of the first women magistrates; she founded the Old People’s Housing Society in Cheltenham, with the aim of providing simple but adequate housing for the elderly. Lilian Faithfull died in one of the homes she helped establish (appropriately called Faithfull House) in her eighty-seventh year. Emily Kemp hoped to train as a medical missionary after Somerville (1881), but her health prevented it. In 1892, she visited her two missionary sisters in China and formed a lasting attachment to the country and its people. Despite her delicate health, she traveled widely in remote areas of China, Manchuria, Korea, and Russian Turkestan. Never without her paint box and brushes during her journeys, Emily painted what she observed—and she was a keen observer—of people’s daily lives in China and the Far East. She witnessed scenes of great beauty and of great desolation. In one extremely poor district of China, she saw the bodies of thirty-three baby girls that had been tossed out in the fields. Starvation was such a real possibility for the people there that they did not want to waste valuable food on girls. Emily found the practice “repulsive” but did not moralize about it.19 She had the necessary attributes of all great travelers: “a strong sense of humour and that inestimable gift, the power to enjoy, a zest for life and all the manifestations of life: she knew how to ignore the disagreeable.”20 She received a medal from the French Geographical Society for one of her travel books, all of which featured her delicate watercolors and sepia drawings. She bequeathed a collection of sketches to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. Louisa Woodcock was among the first female medical practitioners in Great Britain. After Somerville (1888), she entered the London School of Medicine in 1894, the only medical training facility for women, and graduated with honors in 1900. She then took the post of house physician at the Royal Free Hospital, which was the first resident post open to women. Louisa went on to serve as pathologist at the New Hospital for Women and, at the time of her death in 1917, was the senior physician to outpatients.21 Cornelia Sorabji, one of the first Oxford women to achieve international distinction, came to Somerville in 1889 and began to explore the idea of reading for the BCL (bachelor of civil law), an advanced degree course not then open to women. Although she could not receive a degree, she could do the work for it (she had to wait until 1922 before the BCL degree was awarded). Cornelia ran into a snag, however, the week before her finals, when one of the BCL examiners asserted he would not read a

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­ oman’s examination papers. Fortunately, she had the support of influenw tial university men, particularly Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, and they brought the matter before Congregation, requesting that she be allowed to sit for the examination. Congregation granted the decree, a concession that overwhelmed her tutor in Roman law. He rushed to Somerville to inform Cornelia that she need not sit for the exam. Puzzled, she asked why, and he replied: You have your decree. That is enough for a lifetime. You need go no further. The University of Oxford (and the thrill in his voice was awesome) to pass a decree like that!22 Grateful to Congregation but not content with that victory, Cornelia took the BCL examination in June 1892, to her disappointment earning a third. After Somerville, she apprenticed at a solicitor’s firm in London but couldn’t be called to the bar because that profession was closed to women. Returning to India in 1894, Cornelia was prohibited from practicing law because of her gender but eventually became a legal advisor on behalf of women, particularly women in purdah, and minors.23 By the time she was permitted to practice law in India in 1924, her failing eyesight proved to be too great a handicap. Moving back to England in 1929, she devoted herself to writing books, short stories, and articles, even though she was almost blind. She lived to see India’s independence in 1947, but her strong pro-British bias had made her unsympathetic to the nationalist movement, a stance that diminished her reputation in her native land.

Lady Margaret Hall When Dorothy Bradby (LMH 1879) died in 1927 at the age of sixtyfive, the Times on March 25 regretted her death as a “great loss to historical scholarship in England.” She actively assisted her father in his philanthropic work among London’s poor and came late to writing, producing only two books. They were, however, sufficient to illustrate the great care with which she approached her subjects. Always an avid reader, Dorothy was particularly drawn to the French Revolution. In 1915, she wrote her first book, The Life of Barnave, which dealt with a somewhat mysterious figure from that revolution. Her second, A Short History of the French Revolution, took ten years to write, and she was seriously ill during the last four. When it was published in 1926, not long before she died, the book received praise for its lucid exposition of a complex period. In her obituary, the Times called it “a miracle of compression and of historical style. . . . Every point of controversy is examined with large-minded fairness and every character treated not only with justice but with human sympathy.”



First Adventurers, 1879–1889

Irene Nichols read English when she went to Oxford in 1880, one of six students who made up the second group to attend LMH. After leaving in 1884, she studied bookbinding in Rome and became a highly skilled practitioner whose designs showed originality and delicate artistry. She passionately wanted to make her own way in the world and happily lived by herself for a time in London while she perfected her bookbinding, despite a frail constitution and frequent bouts of illness. But family duties claimed her, as they did so many women of her era, and she was forced to give up bookbinding and return home to care for an elderly father when her mother died in 1897. In light of her own experience, Irene was deeply sympathetic toward people whose lives had been thwarted, and she was always open to helping others, particularly women who were struggling through difficult times and emigrants who had fled tyranny. She became enthusiastically devoted to women’s suffrage in the early 1900s and threw herself into the cause. Her strength was not equal to her spirit, however, and she died of influenza in 1907.24 Margaret (Maggie) Benson was one of six children in a complex family headed by a stern, exacting father and an affectionate, indulgent mother. Her mother was the sister of Henry and Arthur Sidgwick, influential advocates for women’s higher education, and both her parents had a close friendship with Elizabeth Wordsworth. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Maggie and her sister Eleanor (Nellie) were allowed to attend LMH. Nellie went up in 1881, two years before Maggie, but had to leave when their father was appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 1883, and their mother summoned Nellie home to help her cope with the duties of an archbishop’s wife. An obedient older daughter, she did not question this decision. (Nellie died of diphtheria in 1890, aged twenty-seven.) Maggie took her sister’s place at LMH in 1883 and left in 1886 with a first in philosophy. Although Maggie Benson demonstrated exceptional intellectual ability while at Oxford, physical and mental illness prevented her from using her talents to the fullest after leaving college. She produced several wellreceived books despite her problems, but in her family that record was not particularly impressive. All the Bensons were literary, and three of her brothers became celebrated authors, with a large number of volumes to their credit. In her most famous book, The Venture of a Rational Faith, Maggie expounded her own religious philosophy and tried to reconcile science and religion. She worked slowly, however, and spent many years writing and rewriting the manuscript before it was published in 1908. Archaeology and art also absorbed her, but these interests were not enough to sweep away the black moods of depression that overcame her, a propensity that she and her siblings inherited from their father. Around 1906, her mental instability became more pronounced, and she finally lapsed into complete insanity in the spring of 1907. Maggie exhibited extreme hos-

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tility toward her mother, which was particularly tragic because she and her mother had always been close. Her family was unable to cope and removed her to a private home, where she remained for the next ten years. Mercifully, her mind cleared just before she died in 1916, and she and her mother spent a happy afternoon together, recalling old times. Her mother promised to come back the next day for another visit, but Maggie died in her sleep that night, aged fifty-one.25 Eleanor Jourdain, like many of the early students from LMH, looked to teaching as the likeliest way to earn a living after she left college in 1886. As one of ten children in a Derbyshire vicarage where money was always in short supply, she knew she would have to look after herself. Her home life was difficult, with parents who were often fairly remote from their children, and she impressed her contemporary at LMH, Janet Courtney, as “a psychological egotist, absorbed in her own mental and emotional processes and therefore liable to take distorted views of others.”26 Such a description hardly seems promising for one seeking to become an educator, but Eleanor was apparently successful as a teacher and as headmistress of Corran, a private girls’ school that she founded in Hertfordshire. Under her leadership, the school grew in ten years from six students to over a hundred and had a staff of eighteen resident and visiting teachers. In 1902, Eleanor accepted the vice-principalship at St. Hugh’s and earned a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1904. She achieved a measure of noto­riety with the publication of a psychic adventure in 1901 (see Chapter 9) but engendered more controversy during her tenure as principal of St. Hugh’s (see Chapter 14). Edith Langridge, who entered LMH in 1885, quickly became the sort of student Elizabeth Wordsworth cherished most: “better with the hands than with the head and best of all with the heart.”27 She was also much valued by the other students for her calm practicality, efficiency, and generosity, whether she was giving out medicinal brandy to those who had trouble sleeping or advising about dresses or hairstyles. Her intelligence was, however, never in dispute. She enjoyed the games that C. L. Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) devised for the students but ruined one of the most difficult ones, called syzygies, which he published in the local paper. Entering the competition under the name Lady Margaret, Edith figured out a method to increase her score without breaking any of the rules, but it spoiled the game. She wrote to Dodgson in the hope that he could alter the rules, but he replied: “Alas this is the end of syzygies. ‘Lady Margaret’ has outwitted me.”28 Edith Langridge was also deeply religious, but quietly so, with a sympathetic and generous nature. When Lady Margaret Hall opened its settlement house in London in 1897, she seemed a natural choice as warden, a position she held for five years. She later joined an Anglican sisterhood and continued her social and religious work in a Calcutta mission as mother superior of the Sisterhood of the Epiphany.



First Adventurers, 1879–1889

When Janet Hogarth went to LMH from a remote rural parsonage in 1885, she probably never imagined that she would become a forerunner of the modern professional woman. From a family of fourteen children (not all lived to adulthood), she had little hope of going to college, but one of her teachers encouraged her to try for a scholarship at LMH, which she won. Janet had reason to be thankful that LMH existed, for she maintained that her father would never have allowed her to go to Girton or Newnham (he considered them “advanced” and therefore dangerous) nor to nondenominational Somerville. He found Lady Margaret Hall, with its strong Church of England ties, acceptable, and the presence of Elizabeth Wordsworth, daughter, sister, and niece of three Anglican bishops, reassured him that his child would be in safe hands. His daughter was immensely grateful for the gift of Oxford and left with a first in philosophy in 1888. Janet initially turned to teaching, but she learned in 1862 that the Royal Commission on Labour wanted to hire university-trained women with a good knowledge of modern languages for temporary positions. She and sixteen other women (eight from Oxford) passed a language examination to get their jobs and so entered the lower echelons of the civil service, a bureaucracy that had not opened its doors very widely to women. The pay was low and the work arduous, but the women demonstrated their fitness for government work. In 1894 Janet became superintendent of women clerks at the Bank of England. Since it was almost unheard of for women to work in banks, this innovation caused a mild sensation. When she determined that she could accomplish no more in that job, Janet left in 1905 to become head librarian of the Times Book Club but resigned in protest seven years later over the introduction of censorship rules. She wasn’t out of work long and began supervising women indexers for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 1911, when she was forty-six, she married her former philosophy tutor at Oxford, W. L. Courtney. He was editor of the Fortnightly Review, an influential literary periodical, and she had been working sporadically for him as a journalist since her Bank of England days. In addition to her busy life in London, she was the author of several books, including her autobiography, Recollected in Tranquillity, in which she recalled with humor, and some exasperation, the difficulties she faced as a professional woman in prewar England.29 Elizabeth Lea was also the daughter of a country clergyman and had no thoughts of going to college. To her great surprise, when she did venture to ask her father whether she might take some correspondence classes, he offered to send her to Lady Margaret Hall, having received favorable reports of the college from a friend. She was delighted and amazed, for as she said: “I had always looked upon my father as an ardent disciple of St. Paul in the matter of the subjection of women, but now he was of his own accord opening for me gates of independence.”30

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She went to LMH in 1887 to read English, and under the influence of Joseph Wright, concentrated on the language part of the English syllabus, especially Old English (see Chapter 3). After college, she had little idea of what to do next, but encouraged by Wright (who was by now taking more than an academic interest in her), she compiled a grammar of the Northumbrian dialect, based on the Northumbrian version of the Gospels. She published her grammar in 1893 and the same year succeeded her former teacher as AEW tutor in Old and Middle English. Over the next three years, Joseph Wright patiently courted Elizabeth, and the couple married in 1896. He was involved in his most famous work, The English Dialect Dictionary, which proved a formidable undertaking, and Elizabeth became an important collaborator. In 1913, she completed a work of her own—Rustic Speech and Folk Lore—and two years after her husband’s death in 1930 published a two-volume biography of Wright. Ella Sykes, Susette Taylor, and Gertrude Bell of LMH traveled far from England after completing their studies. Ella Sykes left LMH in 1881 and in 1894 journeyed with her brother Percy to Persia, where he went to establish a British consulate in the Kerman region. She may well have been the first Englishwoman to visit this area. On leaving the post at Kerman, they traveled by camel across six hundred miles of uninhabited desert to the Indian border doing work for a boundary commission. During the sojourn in Persia, Ella Sykes fell in love with the country and published two entertaining books about her experiences—Through Persia on a Side­Saddle (1898) and Persia and Its People (1910). In 1915, her brother, now Sir Percy, went to Chinese Turkestan to replace the consul general, and Ella again accompanied him. They toured the region for nine months, often on horseback, and collaborated on a book about their travels, Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia (1920). Ella eventually became secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society. When she died in 1939, an obituary notice in the Times for March 29 called her a “pioneer among women in the work of exploration.” Susette Taylor (LMH 1884) studied at both Oxford and the University of Barcelona and became a noted linguist and world traveler, venturing into areas where women were not commonly seen as tourists. Her name lives on at LMH with the Susette Taylor Fellowship, established by one of Miss Taylor’s sisters to promote independent study abroad. The gift marked the first research endowment possessed by LMH. Without a doubt, Gertrude Bell led the most remarkable life of that early band of young Oxford women—world traveler, mountain climber, archaeologist, writer, spy, and authority on the Arab world. Her contemporaries at LMH felt she showed amazing promise when she burst into their midst in 1886 at the age of eighteen, and she didn’t disappoint them, either at college or in her subsequent adventures. Her viva voce (an oral exam after finals in arts subjects) has passed into Oxford legend. It is re-



First Adventurers, 1879–1889

ported that her first examiner, an authority on the early Stuart period, was quite taken aback when Gertrude announced, “I am afraid I must differ from your estimate of Charles I,” and he quickly gave her over to someone else. When another examiner spoke about a German town on the left bank of the Rhine, Gertrude corrected him, “I am sorry, but it is on the right. I know, I have been there.”31 Despite, or possibly because of, such self-possession, she got her first. After leaving Oxford, Gertrude traveled widely and for a time lived in the fairly conventional style of the rich. On trips to Teheran and Damascus, she found herself captivated by the desert and the East and began learning both Persian and Arabic. With little regard for personal safety, she explored inhospitable desert regions and participated in archaeological expeditions. In 1907, she published The Desert and the Sown, a book that was favorably reviewed and considered by one noted Arabist to be “among the dozen best books of Eastern travel.”32 When World War I broke out, Gertrude’s knowledge of the Middle East proved invaluable to the British. She first worked in Cairo for the Office of Military Intelligence, continuing a friendship with T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), and then in Basra, where she drew up detailed maps of the area for the British forces. In 1917, she was sent to Baghdad in the key intelligence post of Oriental secretary to Sir Percy Cox, British high commissioner in the region. She played a central role in creating the new state of Iraq and setting up Faisal ibn Hussein as king. Such was her involvement that both the British and the Arabs often referred to her as “the uncrowned queen of Iraq.” She also relished a new role as honorary director of antiquities for what was to be a national museum in Baghdad, but with Sir Percy’s retirement in 1923, she no longer felt as useful and valued. Though her energy seemed boundless, she died suddenly in her sleep on July 12, 1926, two days before her fifty-eighth birthday. Overwork and the Baghdad climate were cited as the official reasons for her death, but Janet Wallach, in a 1996 biography, claims that Gertrude committed suicide, depressed from personal losses and a sense that her influence was waning. Wallach maintains that she deliberately took an overdose of sleeping pills and never woke up. Gertrude Bell received a full military funeral in Baghdad, and scores of Iraqis flocked to the city to pay their respects. George V sent condolences to her parents, and her obituary in the Times on July 13 included the statement: “Miss Bell has left the memory of a great Englishwoman.”

St. Hugh’s Although St. Hugh’s was not established until 1886, just three years before women students in Oxford celebrated their first decade of existence, the college produced one genuinely outstanding student from that period.

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Edith Wardale entered LMH in 1887 but transferred to St. Hugh’s a year later, the hall’s tenth student. She studied under Joseph Wright, who was very impressed with her linguistic abilities, and took a first in modern languages in 1889, later obtaining a doctorate from Zurich. Between 1889 and 1894, she served as vice-principal of St. Hugh’s and lectured for the AEW before being appointed a tutor at St. Hugh’s. A distinguished scholar of Old English and related languages—she tutored C. S. Lewis for a time when he was an Oxford undergraduate—she published two influential books in her area, An Old English Grammar (1922) and An Introduction to Middle English (1937). She had a deceptively frail appearance and was old-fashioned enough to wear a hat in her own house when hosting young women from St. Hugh’s to tea. Students quickly discovered, however, that Edith Wardale possessed a vigorous and penetrating mind and held them to her exacting standards. A laudatory obituary in the Times on March 5, 1943, ended with this comment: “It was, at bottom, her courage and integrity, both of character and intellect, which called forth the respect of all who knew her.”

Home-Students A large number of the first group of Home-Students became educators after leaving Oxford, as noted earlier. Most of these remained at the secondary level as headmistresses and assistant mistresses, but a few took advantage of the new opportunities in higher education. Rosamund Earle, the daughter of an Oxford professor, was a Home-Student who also studied at Newnham. She lectured at Newnham for a time but in 1899 left Cambridge to become the first tutor to women students at Bristol University. This kind of job was often pastoral rather than academic and required little more than respectability and a modest demeanor. Unlike some other universities, however, Bristol wanted a woman with university training to hold the position, for in addition to acting as superintendent and advisor, she would lecture and give private tutorials. Rosamund met this requirement, and in addition to her supervisory duties, she taught modern history and English.33 Unfortunately, Rosamund’s health had never been robust, and she was forced to give up work completely in 1904. In 1911, she moved to Switzerland in the hope of regaining her health and never returned to England. A remarkable American woman, Elizabeth Kendall, studied as a Home-Student in the 1880s before returning home to complete her academic qualifications. In 1888, she became a professor of history at Wellesley and remained there until 1920. An authority on Asiatic lore, she traveled widely in India, Iran, and China. A trip to remote areas of China, accompanied only by her Irish terrier, Jack, and a Chinese manservant, led her to write A Wayfarer in China, published in 1913. After her retirement from Wellesley, she lived and taught in China for a time before moving to



First Adventurers, 1879–1889

England. When World War II began, she decided to return to the United States because she didn’t want to be a consumer of scarce resources when she could not be an active contributor to the war effort. After the war, she made her final trip across the Atlantic at age ninety-six and died in Somerset.

A Worthwhile Adventure Although these pioneering students might have made valuable contributions without the benefit of a university education, it liberated them from the often stultifying life of middle-class women, giving them a chance to prove they had brains and could make decisions for themselves. The members of this first wave of students, whether they became known in the wider world or not, amply justified the faith that supporters of higher education for women had in them: They demonstrated that they were equal to the task of working hard, and they did so modestly and discreetly. Belying the critics who said that education would be wasted on young women, a remarkably high percentage led productive, even distinguished, lives. They bore out what the nineteenth-century social and political commentator Harriet Martineau once said: Women, like men, can obtain whatever they show themselves fit for. Let them be educated,—let their powers be cultivated to the extent for which the means are already provided, and all that is wanted or ought to be desired will follow of course. Further, “whatever a woman proves herself able to do, society will be thankful to see her do,—just as if she were a man.”34 That judgment no doubt seemed premature to the women who first struggled to obtain a university education; the approbation of society was not readily apparent. Yet, everyone knew the tide had turned. Educated women were sailing forth from Oxford and becoming a visible presence in British life.

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T

he 1890s were years of transition and growth for the Oxford women’s colleges, as they attempted to become more autonomous. Somerville appointed a new principal; the Oxford Home-Students gained their first principal; St. Hilda’s was established as the fifth women’s society in Oxford; the halls began expansion programs; some restrictions on women students were loosened; and the question of degrees for women was broached. Early in the decade (1893), the Hebdomadal Council even accorded women a small degree of recognition by offering to appoint one of its members to sit on the AEW Committee as a representative of the university. In the same year, the vice-chancellor turned over a suite of rooms in the Clarendon Building to the AEW for its use.1 No matter that the rooms were on the top floor (practically the attic), for they were in a university building where the registrar himself had an office. Many hailed these small gains as true progress.

Somerville’s New Principal When Madeleine Shaw Lefevre resigned as principal of Somerville in 1889, the council elected Agnes Maitland to succeed her, a woman well suited to lead Somerville from its Victorian origins as a glorified boarding house to an institution with collegiate aspirations. As Vera Brittain has remarked: “The capable administrator had arrived to take the place of the elegant embodiment of decorous society; the lady was already giving way to the woman.”2 Agnes Maitland, a native of Liverpool, had worked for most of her adult life. Her interest in improving the teaching of domestic economy led to her appointment as inspector of classes on this subject in elementary schools in the North. She campaigned for better hygiene instruction in schools, served as secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund, and wrote stories and cookbooks. She was passionate about education for women and preferred to concentrate on its practical benefits. Although she valued pure scholarship, it could never fully engage her heart. Her administrative skills, grasp of finance, energy, and optimism impressed all who knew her, 74



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and she was unabashedly enthusiastic about Somerville. A much-quoted description of her is that she wanted Somerville “to inherit the earth.” Developing a resident tutorial staff was one of her priorities, for she knew Somerville could never become a college worthy of respect in Oxford without one. Not surprisingly, this move toward autonomy occasioned some friction with the AEW, which from the first had tried to maintain control over all aspects of women’s education in Oxford, including the appointment of tutors to be shared among all the women students. (As noted earlier, Somerville had already appointed a few in-house tutors; however, their duties were more administrative than academic, and their ambiguous status hadn’t caused the AEW much concern.) The desire for more control over the educational direction of students didn’t begin with Agnes Maitland. Before she retired in 1889, Miss Shaw Lefevre, writing to her successor, expressed an emerging independent attitude: I always tried to keep these [arrangements for private tuition] as much as possible in my own hands. I certainly think that the students should look to their Hall for guidance and that the Association should be regarded as an august and independent body not lightly to be applied to.3 Bertha Johnson, as secretary of the AEW, vigorously resisted this trend, even though her job was becoming burdensome as the population of the halls increased. Not only was she a traditionalist who instinctively opposed any break with the past, but also she passionately believed in the principles behind the formation of the AEW: “co-operation combined with freedom, economy, variety (the best choice of teachers being available by this communal system) and also a choice as to the residential system.”4

Bertha Johnson’s Resignation Throughout 1893, relations between Somerville and the AEW remained tense, and feelings often ran high. (The other women’s societies weren’t as prominent as Somerville in this dispute, but they too desired more independence.) The breaking point came in 1894 when the Somerville Council clearly stated that it intended to appoint its own resident tutors in classics and modern history and not rely on the AEW to direct this instruction. Bertha Johnson was furious that Somerville would disregard the rules of the AEW and resigned as secretary. Annie Rogers, who had no objections to the transfer of loyalties from the AEW to the halls, assumed the post.5 Whatever their feelings about how participants in this controversy conducted themselves, most people in Oxford with any connection to women’s education there knew how tirelessly Mrs. Johnson had labored for the cause. Tributes flowed in to her on her resignation—from senior members

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of the university, the principals of the halls, and former students. Professor Arthur Sidgwick, an early champion of women in Oxford and of liberal causes in general, wrote to Mrs. Johnson with a full heart, and his letter captures the sentiments of others. This news has come upon me like a thunderbolt and what we shall do I don’t know. . . . We and the students in the cause of women’s education generally owe you an immeasurable debt for all you have done and borne for us for fifteen years. What we know of this is much, but I suspect that there is infinitely more that we do not know. . . . Tonight I must liberate my soul of gratitude.6 Fortunately, Bertha Johnson did not let her disappointment over the AEW/Somerville wrangle affect her enthusiasm for women’s education in Oxford. With commendable generosity, she offered help and encouragement to her successor, Annie Rogers, and threw her considerable energies into the organization of the Oxford Home-Students. In 1893, the AEW had set up a Committee for Home-Students and named Mrs. Johnson principal. At the time it seemed only a nominal appointment, conferring no particular honor or obligation. Now that Mrs. Johnson no longer had other duties to claim her attention, however, she could use the post to wield some authority and to bring more cohesion to a unique collegiate group. There had been talk about absorbing the Home-Students into the halls, but Mrs. Johnson’s appointment as principal ensured that this group would remain an independent entity—a development many Oxford supporters of higher education for women favored (not least because HomeStudents were unknown at Cambridge, which, to some, seemed to distinguish Oxford over its rival). In writing about this episode, Vera Brittain commented that it was “an insignificant storm in a very small teacup, but it was a necessary part of the growth of Oxford women from adolescence to adulthood.”7 A new stage in women’s education in Oxford began when Somerville and to a certain extent the other women’s societies claimed the right to develop educationally along their own lines, for self-government is one of the hallmarks of an Oxford college. Somerville went one step further in 1894 and changed its title from Somerville Hall to Somerville College in the belief that the new name would enhance its educational status in the eyes of the public and also illustrate the governing body’s wish to raise it above the level of a residence hall. The halls actually had a long way to go before they truly became independent. They still maintained an affiliation with the AEW, which came to perform more administrative functions connected with examinations and payment of fees. They were also governed by councils of men and women who, though vitally interested in the welfare of the colleges, were not salaried members of the institutions. For many years, a di-



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chotomy existed between those who carried on the work of the colleges— teaching and administration—and those who governed and set policy.

Resident Tutors at Somerville After winning the skirmish with the AEW, Agnes Maitland, with energy and ingenuity, set about finding talented women to build up Somerville’s tutorial staff, and she often didn’t have to look beyond her own backyard. Somerville was blessed with many intelligent, ambitious, and able students, and Miss Maitland drew from that pool in assembling a firstrate team of scholars. If no academic opening could readily be found for a student whom Miss Maitland wished to keep, she would shrewdly engage her in some other position—sometimes creating a post if necessary—so that the college wouldn’t lose her. Mildred Pope (1891), one of the most beloved tutors in Somerville’s history, had Agnes Maitland to thank for being able to stay on at college after her student days.She earned a first in modern languages in 1893, a considerable achievement given the circumstances under which she labored. There was little instruction to be had in Oxford in her chosen field of Old French and French philology (modern languages was not yet an official honour school), which forced her to rely heavily on correspondence with Paget Toynbee of Cambridge for much of her tuition.8 She assumed the post of librarian at Somerville first, then was appointed modern language tutor in 1894, a position she retained for forty years. Despite her collegiate duties, she worked on a doctorate from the University of Paris during sabbatical leaves from Somerville and obtained her degree in 1904. Miss Pope achieved some notable firsts in her career: In 1928, she was the first woman in Oxford history to hold a readership (similar to a lectureship), and in 1939, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bordeaux, the first woman to be so distinguished by a French university. Nicknamed “the pontiff” by her students, Miss Pope was not only an inspiring teacher (even on so dry a subject as Old French philology) but also a generous, fair-minded, and sympathetic person who tried to coax the best out of her pupils with humor and kindness. Writer Dorothy ­Sayers supposedly used her as the model for the kindly don Miss Lydgate in Gaudy Night, a mystery set in an Oxford woman’s college that strongly resembled Somerville. When in 1934 Mildred Pope was appointed professor of French language and romance philology at Manchester University, she left Oxford having gained the admiration and affection of scores of students. Other Somervillians who went on to become resident tutors include ­Alice Bruce and Jane Kirkaldy, whose careers have already been noted; they came on board in 1894 and remained at the college for many years. ­Agnes Maitland was prepared to offer the patched-together position of tutor/

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librarian/secretary to Emily Penrose (1889) after she brought honor to her college in 1892 by becoming the first woman student at Oxford to achieve a first in greats, but Miss Penrose took the more prestigious position of principal of Bedford College, London. (She returned to Somerville in 1907, however, as principal after Miss Maitland’s death.) Miss Maitland offered Margery Fry (1894), another future principal of Somerville, the same sort of position in 1899, and she jumped at the chance, though she admitted she had little vocation for the job. She had recently come down from Somerville, was once again living with her parents, and had no clear sense of what direction her life should take. She saw the invitation from Miss Maitland as a lifeline that enabled her, in the words of her biographer, to escape “the fearful enervation of the grown-up unmarried daughter living at home.”9 The task of librarian occupied much of her time, as well as other small duties in the college, but she also managed some tutoring in mathematics, the subject she had read at Somerville. Nor did Miss Maitland hesitate to cast her net wider than her own college in expanding her tutorial staff. She recruited Beatrice Lees, of LMH (1890), as history tutor in 1894, beginning a tradition of exchange at the senior level between the two colleges. In 1896, Miss Maitland imported Hilda L. Lorimer from Scotland via Girton College, Cambridge, as classics tutor. A definite “character,” Miss Lorimer enlivened Somerville with her witty and acerbic comments, uncompromising standards and trenchant criticisms, and “crusading anger—against injustice, cruelty, meanness, or lack of integrity.”10 Affectionately known as “the lorrie bird” because of her passionate enthusiasm for ornithology, she was also an outstanding scholar of Homeric archaeology and devoted herself to teaching and research in that area. Finally, Phoebe Sheavyn, appointed as English tutor in 1897, was educated in Wales and had already completed a teaching stint in the United States at Bryn Mawr in what was the beginning of a long and varied career (she lived to be 102). Miss Sheavyn was the daughter of a tradesman, her lower-middle-class background unusual among female academics of her day. As a result of Agnes Maitland’s desire and ability to attract able young scholars to Somerville, the college took a leading role in regularizing conditions of employment for college tutors—a relatively new profession for women in the late nineteenth century. In the very early days of higher education for women, at Oxford and elsewhere, women tutors often lacked any formal qualifications for their jobs, as most had had no access to a college education. They were often appointed on an ad hoc basis, and their duties were as much administrative as academic. They spent most of their time supervising and chaperoning students (resembling boarding-school teachers) or assisting the principal with whatever jobs she might delegate. By the 1890s, however, a new class of women entered the academic labor market—women who had benefited from two or more years of college and



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were thus more qualified than their predecessors to undertake the instruction of women students. Many were passionately interested in their chosen fields of study and eager to pursue research as well as teaching. Somerville wanted to establish the position of tutor as a more professional one and appointed a committee in 1894 to look into the matter. One of the first steps was to make tutors honorary members of the college. None of the women’s societies provided for tutors to be part of their governing bodies, but as honorary members, they could participate in Somerville’s general meetings, a privilege they exercised immediately and with increasing prominence. Eight years later, in 1902, tutors requested the right to be elected to the Somerville Council, and the request was granted, with one of their number gaining a council seat. Getting away from the old ad hoc system, which offered little consistency or security, the college made tutorial appointments for two years, to be renewed every five years thereafter, subject to evaluation. Somerville also took the almost unheardof step of granting its tutors paid sabbatical leaves (which enabled Mildred Pope to work on her doctorate in Paris), and in 1917, the college was the first of the Oxford women’s societies to set up pension plans for its staff. In addition, Somerville took the lead in promoting research by establishing the Somerville Research Fellowship (later known as the Mary Somerville Research Fellowship) in 1902. It was advertised as a three-year appointment, open to any Oxford woman who had taken an honour school, with a yearly stipend of £140 plus board. The primary condition was that the recipient pursue some line of research and publish her results. In 1903, Evelyn Jamison of LMH (1898) had the distinction of being Oxford’s first woman research fellow when she was elected to continue her studies in medieval history.11 Despite attempts to make the position of college tutor an attractive one for educated women, it was difficult to sugarcoat some of the obstacles. No matter how valuable women tutors might be to their college, they were excluded from the life of the university. They had no say or influence concerning the curricula or timetables their students should follow, and no one sought their advice about the content of examinations. Their teaching and supervisory duties could be heavy, their opportunities for research were often limited, and they were frequently denied access to laboratories and libraries on anything approaching an equal basis with men. They rarely had intellectual contact with male scholars in their own field, and if their opinions or expertise were sought outside the bounds of their own necessarily select circle, it was often done in a backstairs sort of way. Because women’s colleges were so strapped financially, they could offer only low stipends but could ease that economic burden by including room and board. Still, given the few avenues open to women with scholarly inclinations, the life of residential tutor in a woman’s college could have advantages. They lived simply, and their material needs were adequately taken

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care of with little fuss. Sometimes, they even had private space and encouragement to devote themselves to work that was important to them, and they were part of a community of like-minded people with opportunities for close friendships and intellectual stimulation.

Somerville’s Expansion Miss Maitland didn’t pour all her energies into developing a stellar tutorial staff. With the help of timely benefactions, she also undertook an ambitious building program. Some expansion had already taken place: A new wing was added in 1881, and the first phase of West Building (housing eighteen students with their own dining and drawing rooms) was completed in 1887. Between 1890 and 1897, new structures were built, including a gymnasium, and old ones modified. By the end of the century, Somerville could accommodate as many as seventy-six students. The building project that lay closest to Miss Maitland’s heart was the construction of a library. Somerville had been steadily acquiring books since its inception, largely through gifts, and now possessed around six thousand volumes, which were stored in no fixed place but scattered around the college where shelves could be found. An appeal for funds proved successful, in part because former students responded generously, as they had for the first research fellowship and would continue to do in the coming years. Somerville had secured the support and interest of old Somervillians in 1896. The college followed Girton’s lead by adopting new articles of association whereby membership was thrown open at greatly reduced rates to all former students who had been at college for three years and taken an honour examination. These former students had the right to elect members to the governing council and to be elected themselves. In the absence of rich donors for endowments, Somerville was able to tap into an increasingly large body of women who could be relied on for contributions.12 With funds in place, work began on the library early in 1903, and despite delays occasioned by weather that was deemed abysmal even by Oxford standards, the first library built by an Oxford woman’s college was completed by October of the same year. In July 1904, the building was officially opened with a ceremony attended by more than six hundred ­people, including the vice-chancellor and proctors of the university. Shortly thereafter, the library received two thousand volumes of John Stuart Mill’s superb collection and the general library and manuscripts of writer and Egyptologist Amelia Edwards. Miss Maitland lived long enough to celebrate the library’s completion, but health problems began to interfere with her work. After a long illness, she died of cancer in 1906 at the age of fifty-seven. Her contributions to



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Somerville had been substantial, not only the tangible benefits of excellent tutors and much-needed buildings but also the spirit of optimism and confidence with which she infused students and staff alike.

New Developments at LMH and St. Hugh’s Change came more slowly to Lady Margaret Hall, probably because of Elizabeth Wordsworth’s long and serene tenure, but the situation was far from static. Constitutional developments began in 1892 when a deed of trust placed the property and management of the hall on a legal footing. The deed vested the property in three trustees and laid out the aims and objectives of the hall. The LMH Committee was then transformed into a more formal council in 1893 with W. A. Spooner, dean of New College, as the head.13 By 1892, Elizabeth Wordsworth could no longer maintain her vision of the hall as a small Christian family. The original building now held about forty students, considerably exceeding the limit of twenty-five that she thought desirable, and overcrowding was becoming a serious inconvenience as dining and library facilities grew inadequate. Also, more and more women sought admission, and it seemed that the pattern would continue. With her own money, Miss Wordsworth bought a house across the road from LMH in 1889 that could hold twelve more students (known as the Wordsworth Hostel), and in 1894, the college leased a house in nearby Crick Road to accommodate seven students (who became known as the “Crickets”). The two hostels were stopgap measures at best, and Miss Wordsworth became reconciled to the idea that LMH would have to be enlarged. A desire to keep up with Somerville may have also spurred her on; she did not want LMH to lag behind if change were inevitable. Once she decided that expansion was necessary, she threw herself into plans for a new building. After much negotiation, the college purchased an adjoining site from St. John’s, hired an architect, and opened an appeal fund. The appeal was not overly successful, but with loans from friends at reduced rates, building began in 1895. Wordsworth Building (as it was named) officially opened in the fall of 1896, the first phase of more elaborate construction to be completed later. LMH also did not keep pace with Somerville in attaching women tutors to the hall, appointing its first residential tutor only in 1898 and its second eight years later. Miss Wordsworth certainly found it more economical to rely on the AEW’s centralized teaching pool at that time, but she was also probably not as willing as Miss Maitland to tangle with the association. For one thing, Bertha Johnson had been closely connected with the hall from the beginning, and she was still active in its day-to-day affairs. For another, Miss Wordsworth didn’t want her students to miss

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any opportunity of working with eminent university men willing to devote time to them. She firmly believed that contact with masculine minds was of great benefit to young women who had often had little interaction with men outside their own families. She succinctly stated her position in the Englishwoman’s Review (although her old-fashioned phrasing startles modern ears): There is not the smallest doubt that personal intercourse with a man of first-rate abilities is one of the most valuable privileges which women students in Oxford (or elsewhere) can enjoy.14 Miss Wordsworth didn’t necessarily believe that men were superior to women intellectually; she just felt that male teachers could offer points of view that were different and stimulating. Yet she knew that as the population of women students grew, LMH couldn’t expect the men who had generously taken on the extra burden of tutoring them to meet the rising demand. Miss Wordsworth also knew, like her counterpart at Somerville, that she needed to develop an internal tutorial staff if LMH was ever to develop into a real Oxford college. Meanwhile, St. Hugh’s, which had begun life on a precarious footing in 1886, had weathered financial problems and Miss Wordsworth’s domination. A more stable existence began when the hall gained its first constitution under a deed of trust executed in 1895. Four trustees who became ex officio members of the hall’s governing council then shared responsibility for the property of St. Hugh’s. The council also elected four new members, three of whom—one man and two women—were tutors. Although the two women were AEW tutors, not St. Hugh’s, a small link had begun between teaching and governing. One historian noted this development by remarking: “One is surprised to see such a link at the very beginning of St. Hugh’s independence: it is one of the most important differences between a hall of residence and a college, and St. Hugh’s was barely secure even as a hall of residence.”15 Annie Rogers, one of the elected members, served on the council for more than forty years—just another example of her remarkable service to the cause of women’s education in Oxford. The other woman tutor, Edith Wardale, had been a St. Hugh’s student, beginning a long tradition of strong contacts between former students and the hall. Miss Moberly had always wanted old students to maintain links with their college and approved the move in 1895 to make those who fulfilled certain conditions and paid a set fee members of St. Hugh’s Hall, with the right to vote at the annual meeting and receive the annual report. She also welcomed a more informal organization of former students, which became St. Hugh’s Club in 1898 and included both past and present students. Members met once or twice a year and kept track of college ac-



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tivities through the annual Club Paper, an informative and entertaining booklet chock-full of news relating to St. Hugh’s in particular and Oxford in general. Old students could, of course, belong to both groups and were encouraged to do so. During this period of constitutional development, St. Hugh’s steadily grew but did not yet look like a college. Students lived in an assortment of houses in the Norham Gardens area, an arrangement that preserved a familial rather than a collegiate atmosphere. The library was hardly worthy of the name; a few bookcases were sufficient to house the volumes. Still, everyone sensed that St. Hugh’s position in the women’s college hierarchy was secure and that the college would expand in the not-so-distant future. After 1895, Miss Moberly was eager to appoint hall tutors, but she had to be careful with her finances. Although Dora Wylie was brought in as both history tutor and vice-principal in 1898, her duties were largely administrative. For the next few years, Miss Moberly rather cannily appointed some AEW tutors as St. Hugh’s tutors and thus was able to draw on more experienced and capable tutors than she might have been able to afford otherwise. Combining appointments in this way saved money, but it wasn’t entirely satisfactory to the tutors themselves. Bowing to pressure, the St. Hugh’s Council formally recognized its tutors in 1908 and laid down conditions for their terms of appointments and duties. Their names also appear for the first time on the staff list in the 1907–1908 annual report: Annie Rogers, classics; Edith Wardale, English; Lettice Fisher, modern history; Eleanor Jourdain, French; and Jane Kirkaldy, natural science.16 (Eleanor Jourdain was the only resident tutor at this point.) As a further sign of development, St. Hugh’s received its first endowed scholarship in 1898. Clara Mordan, a committed suffragist and the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer had attended a women’s emancipation conference where she heard Annie Rogers deliver a paper on the position of women in Oxford and Cambridge. Miss Rogers mentioned the great need for scholarships and donations, and when Miss Mordan expressed interest in offering money to an Oxford women’s college, Miss Rogers suggested St. Hugh’s. Miss Mordan came for a visit in 1897 and struck up an immediate friendship with Miss Moberly that would lead to significant financial benefits for St. Hugh’s. Her first generous contribution to the college was a £1,000 endowment for a scholarship, the only stipulation being that a Mordan Scholar have nothing to do with vivisection. In a letter dated July 6, 1898, Miss Mordan thanked Anne Moberly for an account of her first scholar, adding: “We will hope her capacity for study corresponds with her full-sized dimensions, which you describe as bordering on ‘elephantine.’ ”17 It is a measure of their friendship that they could be so frank with each other.

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A Corporate Identity for Home-Students When Bertha Johnson turned her attention to the Home-Students in 1894, she and her committee drew up rules of conduct, residence, and registration in an effort to impose stricter organization on a widely diverse group of students. Consequently, Home-Students increasingly took on the appearance of a corporate society that was similar to the halls. The members were, however, without a building of their own and lodged all over Oxford, which made it difficult to get to know each other. Mrs. Johnson was perhaps a bit slow to recognize that Home-Students, even more than hall students, needed social contacts among themselves if they were to develop a sense of shared identity, and for a time, she organized only end-of-term meetings and a few tea parties in her home. Many students felt the need for additional informal gatherings and pressed for a common meeting place. In 1898, the society rented a room at 131 High Street where students could rest between lectures over tea or coffee. A former student remembered that it was also a highly convenient spot to park bicycles, which women students now rode all over Oxford. They were forbidden to leave their bicycles outside lecture halls, but the owners of the High Street house allowed students to prop their bikes up in the back garden—never in front of the house, as university authorities told the women it was wise not to advertise that they had a meeting place on a prominent site.18 “Unobtrusive” was still the watchword for women students in Oxford at this time. Although the High Street common room served a useful purpose, it was too small to accommodate the steadily growing numbers of HomeStudents —from around forty-four in 1893 to almost a hundred by 1910. Responding to her students’ needs, Mrs. Johnson in 1910 purchased with her own money one of the oldest houses in Oxford, 16 Ship Street, which she and her friends furnished down to the last cup and saucer. Now the Home-Students had a home in which to relax, meet friends, hold evening entertainments, and in the words of one early member, “satisfy their craving for notice boards and notices.”19 As the society became more cohesive, it adopted the beaver as its crest in 1913 to symbolize its new corporate feeling (the beaver may work communally but sleeps in its own lodge) and published its own magazine, appropriately called the Ship.

The Founding of St. Hilda’s While the four women’s societies quietly established themselves as a permanent presence in Oxford during the 1890s, a new venture for women appeared on the scene, the brainchild of another strong-minded and determined woman. Dorothea Beale, the renowned headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, had opened a teacher-training college, St. Hilda’s, at her school



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in 1885, and she made the unique offer that students who earned their degrees and passed their professional examinations should stay on an extra year to study and prepare for their careers without any undue pressures. It was not long before she trained her sights on Oxford as a suitable place for prospective teachers and older students to spend this additional time, taking advantage of the new opportunities in higher education for women. As she expressed it: I have often felt . . . that a year in which they should be allowed to expatiate in intellectual pastures in a way that we older women used to do before examinations for women existed, would be of great value. And they can do this best in some university town, where they can have libraries and museums and such lectures and private help as they most require—both hearing and asking questions, rather than being asked and answering.20 To that end, she proposed to the AEW in 1889 that she set up a residence for young women who had (1) passed degree examinations from London but wished to live in Oxford for a time attending lectures and using libraries and laboratories; (2) passed the Cambridge Higher Locals and wished to study for a year without the burden of examinations; or (3) passed no examinations but wanted to attend the AEW lectures. This proposal did not go down well. To the AEW, the principals, and Mrs. Johnson, the scheme seemed likely to endanger the still fragile position of women students in Oxford by fostering dilettantism (a charge they scrupulously wanted to avoid) and allowing women to come up under less rigid rules than had already been adopted. Conveniently forgetting that she had opened St. Hugh’s on the cheap, Miss Wordsworth was alarmed when she heard that students would pay only thirty-five pounds a year and rather sniffily suggested that such low fees would draw women for whom good manners were not necessarily important. The AEW Council, concerned that Miss Beale’s plan would enable women to come to Oxford without being seriously committed to their work and thus undermine the respect that women students had so laboriously achieved, reported that her proposal was unacceptable. Though the AEW probably had no real authority to prevent her opening a house of residence, Miss Beale tactfully withdrew but hinted that she might return. In the summer of 1892, Alice Andrews, a teacher at the Ladies’ College, visited Oxford and learned that a house was for sale in Cowley Place, just east of Magdalen Bridge on beautiful grounds along the Cherwell. After looking at it, Miss Andrews felt that the house could easily be converted into a residence for women and passed on her opinion to Miss Beale. Miss Beale concurred and in November 1892 purchased Cowley House, as it was then called, for five thousand pounds. Before the sale was complete,

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she invited Mrs. Esther Burrows, who lived in Cheltenham, to come to Oxford and supervise the resident students. Not yet fifty when she accepted Miss Beale’s offer, Esther Burrows had already experienced several upheavals in her life. She married in 1870 and was widowed only a year later, three months before her daughter, Christine, was born. She moved back in with her parents, but her father suffered business reversals and died in 1884, leaving his daughter no inheritance. Esther Burrows determined to support herself and her child and chose to open a boarding house in Cheltenham for students from the Ladies’ College. When she arrived in Oxford, Christine was already there, having gone up to LMH in 1891. In fact, Miss Beale rather autocratically informed Mrs. Burrows that she expected Christine to transfer to the new hall and then remain as a resident tutor after completing her studies. As soon as negotiations for Cowley House were complete, work began to make it suitable for students. Miss Beale was intimately involved in the furnishing and refurbishing, paying most of the expenses out of her own pocket. Despite a demanding schedule at the Ladies’ College, she and Mrs. Burrows carried on a lively correspondence that took in every detail of the renovation. In early October 1893, Mrs. Burrows and Christine took up residence, followed shortly by six other students. Miss Beale determined to name the hall St. Hilda’s, after St. Hilda of Whitby (616–680), the English abbess who has been called the first great educator in England. It was formally opened on November 6, 1893, with addresses by the Bishop of Oxford and the Dean of Winchester. The bishop warned students not to neglect their souls or become too narrowly focused in the pursuit of knowledge and urged caution for a venture that he described as “new, experimental, and,—pardon me if I say it—rather ambitious.” The dean was more warmly welcoming and gently reminded the bishop that “there have been women students at Oxford now for many years; and their position has been frankly and readily recognised by the teachers of the university.” He also commented on how impressively women students had acquitted themselves since arriving in Oxford. He challenged the new students of St. Hilda’s to carry on the tradition and to devote themselves to “high ideals, serious studies, and all those joys of a pure and newly unfolded life which are brighter, I think, at Oxford than anywhere in the world.”21 Mrs. Johnson, Miss Maitland, Miss Moberly, and Miss Pearson, the vice-principal of LMH, all attended the opening ceremony. They were not pleased by the speakers’ implied assumption that St. Hilda’s existed on an equal plane with the other women’s societies, and the AEW shared their view. When Miss Beale informed the AEW that she had purchased a house of residence for women and installed a principal, the council had to accept her actions as a fait accompli but did not have to recognize St. Hilda’s as a



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women’s hall. The AEW didn’t completely turn its back on the new hostel, however, but laid down some conditions to which St. Hilda’s must adhere during a three-year probationary period before it could be designated a hall. Although the regulations would apply to any proposed hall in Oxford, they of course immediately concerned St. Hilda’s, which, as it turned out, was the last women’s society to be established in Oxford. The regulations included the following stipulations: that the control of the hall and its funds be vested in a council; that it not be an association for the purpose of profit; that the hall council formally apply for recognition to the AEW Council; and that all hall students become registered members of the AEW. In addition, the AEW Council had to be satisfied that the buildings were suitable, the hall could provide for twenty students, there be at least twelve in residence at the time of application, the disciplinary rules were adequate, there was a supervisory head, and students were in residence for a regular course of study.22 The AEW spelled out other regulations, including the requirement that St. Hilda’s students would be classified as Home-Students until the hall achieved recognition. Miss Beale didn’t appear to balk at having to jump through some hoops to place St. Hilda’s on an equal footing with the existing societies. Perhaps she had already decided to strive for hall status rather than to exist as a mere boarding house, for she worked over the next few years to fulfill the AEW requirements. Miss Beale’s most immediate problem was not whether her young women would be accepted as registered students in Oxford, however, but whether she could attract enough students to make St. Hilda’s a going concern. Because she hoped that student fees would cover most of the expenses, she needed to keep the house, which could hold thirteen students, filled to capacity, but this she found difficult to do. Ten students were in residence the first year (1893), a number rarely exceeded over the next c­ouple of years, even falling to eight at one low point. Although she expected St. Hilda’s primarily to attract Cheltonians (and nine of the first thirteen came from the Ladies’ College), Miss Beale was willing to welcome anyone who could pay for a place, regardless of where she had been educated. Many young women eager to come to Oxford did not, however, list the hall as their first choice. They preferred to attend societies that were not on probation and had already achieved some measure of academic standing and ones that did not cater to old Cheltonians. Miss Beale strongly felt that St. Hilda’s future depended on being recognized as a hall, and despite many of the AEW requirements going unmet during the three-year probation, she decided to apply for recognition at the end of that period. In the application, she reported to the AEW that plans for a new wing were in the offing and that a governing council would be formed. Surprisingly, on November 25, 1896, the AEW unanimously

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agreed to the request and gave recognition to St. Hilda’s for five years. After the five-year limit expired, recognition was no longer contingent on time limits. In July 1897, a ten-member council was formed with four representatives from Cheltenham Ladies’ College and one from the Hebdomadal Council. In October of the same year, St. Hilda’s was incorporated as St. Hilda’s Hall, a nonprofit limited liability company. Miss Beale still maintained strict control, however, for of the 492 shares that were issued at one pound each, she held 480. Honoring her promise to the AEW to provide more accommodation, Miss Beale added a south wing to the building in 1897–1898. The new addition provided a larger dining room and could house twelve more students. Luckily, St. Hilda’s enrollments began to climb after the hall was incorporated; by the turn of the century, twenty-five students were on the books. As yet probably too dependent on Miss Beale’s largesse, St. Hilda’s could still look to a future considerably more secure than its shaky start in 1893 had augured.

New Freedoms As the women’s societies gained some measure of autonomy, so did women students. In 1893, Victoria still reigned, but one of the most Victorian practices at Oxford—chaperonage at lectures—was abolished. This “relic of a rapidly dying and effete civilization,” as one Somervillian described it, was quietly done away with to the relief of women students and chaperones alike.23 No longer would students have to stand conspicuously outside a lecture hall, unable to enter until the lady in charge arrived, nor would the women conscripted to act as chaperones be obliged to take time away from their own pursuits to shepherd students to lectures. Women students were, however, encouraged to exercise this new freedom cautiously. The authorities preferred that they attend lectures with at least one other female student, if possible, and that women sit together, apart from the undergraduates. Chaperones didn’t disappear from the Oxford scene altogether (traces of the chaperonage system lingered into the 1930s). They were still required for all social occasions out of college, and there must be at least two women at all tutorials with male tutors or for walks about the town. These requirements were not always enforced, however. A Somerville student remembered the delights of ice-skating in Christ Church Meadow one winter; as she and her friends skated unchaperoned with men they knew, “all the little rules of etiquette depart.”24 Edith Olivier, a St. Hugh’s student in 1895, was sometimes invited to dine with Mr. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in his Christ Church rooms, and he insisted that no chaperone be present: “If you don’t come alone, you shan’t come at all.” Miss Moberly



Emerging from Adolescence

acquiesced with the comment that “once more, we must make a virtue of necessity.” Edith reported that Mr. Dodgson always escorted her back to St. Hugh’s in time for the 10:30 curfew bell “to show his sincere respect for college rules so long as he approved of what they laid down.”25 Lewis Carroll was a friend of Edith’s family, had an eminent position in Oxford, and at sixty-three was hardly a young man, so Miss Moberly probably had no fears for Edith’s reputation; however, the incident shows that the rules could definitely be bent when the occasion warranted. Eleanor Lodge, who came to LMH in 1890, sketched a picture of college life in her autobiography that closely resembled earlier accounts. She repeated familiar themes of delight in a room of one’s own, the satisfaction of hard but inspiring work, and the joy of being responsible for one’s own time. But she exhibited a more relaxed attitude to some of the rules than had been apparent among the first women students. When she remarked that “even a dash into town to buy a cake involved the search for a companion or else the burden of an uneasy conscience,” she added that the burden was one “which I am afraid we often managed to bear with considerable equanimity.”26 If this very respectable student, who went on to become history tutor and vice-principal of LMH, could wink at the rules with a light heart, women were indeed expressing an independence rarely shown by their predecessors. Eleanor also maintained, however, that chaperones could be useful at times. Somerville students were permitted to attend the theatre unchaperoned (although not alone) but, because they had to get back before curfew, couldn’t always stay to see the end of a performance. LMH students, able to stay out past curfew if accompanied by a chaperone, could smugly remain in their seats while the Somervillians trooped out.27 The demise of chaperonage at lectures didn’t mean that women were now able to converse freely with undergraduates. (Even after women were admitted to membership in the university in 1920, they were discouraged from talking to men before and after lectures.) Their contacts with male students remained limited and strictly controlled. The occasions at which they were permitted to mingle were often stiff and formal and did not always give rise to free-flowing conversations. When Edward Caird became master of Balliol in 1893, he and his wife instituted mixed breakfast parties for small groups of male and female students. This heretofore untried experiment aroused conflicting emotions in the women invited—pleasure at the honor of being asked and dread of the event itself. The students were often paralyzed by shyness and although Mrs. Caird’s end of the table was sometimes lively, the master’s long silences did nothing to help his immediate neighbors loosen up. It must have been an enormous relief to hosts and guests when the meal was over. When bicycles first appeared in Oxford in the early 1890s, women students reveled in the freedom that they afforded, as Pauline Adams notes in

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her history of Somerville: “It would be difficult to over-estimate the sense of liberation which mastery of a bicycle gave to women of this generation.”28 Another writer took a metaphorical tack: “The ability to move from A to B unaccompanied symbolized more than independent movement: it indicated an independence of thought and intention which might lead women to follow alternative routes.”29 At first, women students were subject to certain restrictions on bicycle riding, but after Elizabeth Wordsworth and Annie Rogers took it up, prohibitions fell by the wayside. Miss Wordsworth actually rode a three-wheeler, more like a large tricycle, and enjoyed excursions with her students. She was, however, prone to sudden stops and seemed oblivious to the fact that, while she could easily continue a conversation and remain upright, her companions were desperately trying not to fall over. Eleanor Lodge was a particularly keen cycler and thought nothing of riding to Circencester and back in a day to visit a good friend—a total of seventy-two miles. Another long-distance rider was Florence Wyld, a St. Hugh’s student of the late 1890s. She once traveled the eighty miles to her home by bicycle when she lacked money for a railway ticket and remembered riding miles and miles along dusty paths with not another soul in sight.30 The sight of female cyclers racing around the countryside and of Annie Rogers, typically dressed in her shabby old clothes, thick boots, and heavy wool stockings, pedaling along the streets of Oxford was surely trampling the image of woman as a delicate flower. The slight relaxation of rules that governed women students and the physical freedom the bicycle made possible may not seem very important milestones along the road to independence, but they signified that the “nanny phase” for Oxford women was beginning to die away. Most women students in this last decade of the Victorian age were still obedient to the idea that they must tread warily, lest they offend townspeople and university authorities alike; however, they now felt less like schoolgirls who must be protectively monitored and more like mature students capable of regulating their own behavior. An important impetus to their emergence from an adolescent state was the fight for degrees in 1894. Although the women did not win the battle, they found many eminent people, both inside and outside the university, treating their cause very seriously.

Elizabeth Wordsworth, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, in 1889.

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Somerville students in a performance of Demeter, a masque written by Robert Bridges for the occasion, at the opening of the Champneys Library in 1904.

Opposite page: Cyclists, c. 1895. From left to right: Dorothy Scott, Somerville student; Margery Fry, Somerville student and future principal of her college; Constance Crommelin (later Mrs. John Masefield); and Isabel Fry, Margery Fry’s sister. Jane Willis Kirkaldy (center), tutor to all Oxford women reading science, with a group of science students in 1896. Each student holds an emblem of her subject.

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Postcard designed by Edmund New for the Oxford Women Students’ Society for Women’s Suffrage, 1912.

The Lady Margaret Hall hockey team, 1900.

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Three Lady Margaret Hall students near their college on the River Cherwell, 1905.

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Dorothy Sayers and other Somervillians rehearsing Pied Pipings, the going-down play for 1915. Sayers is impersonating Sir Hugh Allen, conductor of Oxford’s Bach Choir.

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Vera Brittain in uniform as a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) in 1916.

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Three Lady Margaret Hall students having a picnic by the river, 1918.

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arely in the forefront of social change, Oxford began debat  ing degrees for women in 1894, sixteen years after London Univer  sity conferred its first degrees on women (with the exception of medicine). Yet “Britain had blazed no trail,” as one educational historian put it, “in the long struggle to obtain university degrees.”1 Women attending universities in British Commonwealth countries—particularly Australia, New Zealand, and Canada—were able to obtain degrees in the late 1870s and early 1880s. In the United States, Oberlin College in Ohio opened as a coeducational institution in 1833, but women students followed a less rigorous curriculum than the men. Four Oberlin coeds challenged this procedure in 1837, and women were thereafter allowed to choose which educational track they preferred—the full college course that had been reserved only for men or the diluted course (no Greek, Latin, or calculus) that been designed for women. In 1841, three women received degrees from Oberlin that were equivalent to those obtained by men. Iowa and Wisconsin became the first U.S. state universities to admit women, in 1855 and 1867 respectively. By 1870, six other state universities had followed their lead. But chronology does not tell the whole story. Women students were often subject to academic and social restrictions once they were admitted, and as educator Barbara Solomon has noted, “setbacks always accompanied the progress, for skepticism lingered about the worth of educating women.” As Solomon further pointed out, however, “the historical paradox remained that women’s access to the colleges progressed steadily” so that, between 1870 and 1900, the number of women students in the United States mushroomed from eleven thousand to eighty-five thousand.2 British universities lagged behind those of other English-speaking nations in admitting women to full membership, but the gap began to close in the last decades of the nineteenth century. London University led the way in 1878. The Victoria University, a federation of Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds, admitted women to classes in 1883 and began opening degrees on a piecemeal basis until 1897, when it awarded degrees to women in all subjects except medicine and engineering. In 1892, four Scottish universi99

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ties (Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Aberdeen) admitted women to degrees, as did the University of Wales when it was formed in 1893. When Durham University allowed women to take degrees in 1895, only two chartered British universities still refused degrees to their women students: Cambridge and Oxford.

The Status of Oxford Women Students in 1894 All the examinations leading to a BA degree at Oxford were open to women by 1894, and women, if they chose, could now study for a BA under exactly the same requirements as men.3 The only drawback was that they would receive not a degree but a piece of paper from the Delegacy of Local Examinations testifying to their work. Many felt this was poor compensation, when they were vying for jobs with women who could write Bachelor of Arts after their names. Prospective employers did not know how to assess their qualifications, and they were sometimes passed over. Oxford women were going into the labor market in increasing numbers, and they felt handicapped. The certificates issued by the Delegacy of Local Examinations to Oxford’s women students specified the examinations they had passed but did not attest to residence in Oxford or time limits for examination preparation. Women had long operated under a more flexible system than undergraduates. Men who intended to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree had to be admitted into an approved college, hall, or body of noncollegiate students in Oxford for a period of twelve terms (three years) and were required to pass three examinations within that time period—responsions, the first public examination (including a compulsory exam in divinity), and the second public examination. Women, on the other hand, did not have to reside in Oxford before presenting themselves for examinations (although most did); they were not required to pass any of the intermediate examinations in the first public examination before proceeding to finals; and they did not have to adhere to a set number of terms as they planned their course of study. This flexibility had been necessary when higher education for women was still regarded as an experiment. Many women were ill-prepared for a demanding system of examinations in those early days; others who needed to earn their living hadn’t the time or money to stay at Oxford for a full three years; and still others were unable to secure parental approval to be away from home for more than a short period. Annie Rogers believed that “the irregularities did harm outside” and that “it was difficult to maintain that if the University allowed women a license which it did not grant to men, it was not a concession to inferiority.”4 By 1894, fifteen years after Somerville and LMH opened their doors to women, it seemed time to move out of the experimental phase.



Honored Guests

Although some Oxford men still didn’t believe women belonged in their university, others accepted the presence of women students. Women had quietly infiltrated the once almost exclusively male citadel; they had behaved with exceptional decorum; they had not been carted off to hospitals or mental institutions with brain fever; and the majority had shown that work of a university standard was not beyond their grasp. Fewer and fewer women came to Oxford who were not serious students intending to stay a full three years, although, by necessity, there were still those who found the flexibility of their academic situation appealing. It was better to have a taste of Oxford than to push away hungry from the table. Yet the women students who labored under almost the same conditions as the men had little to show for their efforts by the time they left Oxford except the satisfaction of proving they were worthy of a university education. That satisfaction could be short-lived if their Oxford experience counted for less on the job market than a degree in hand.

Raising the Degree Question Despite the concessions and privileges granted to women over the course of their residence at Oxford, no one knew just how much recognition the university was prepared to offer them. Even the advocates of women’s education in Oxford could not always agree among themselves about the extent to which women should be incorporated into the university. Nevertheless, in 1894, T. H. Grose, fellow of Queen’s and president of the AEW, decided the time was ripe for raising the question of degrees for women to the AEW Council. Initially, he spoke of requesting a special degree, not the BA, to be awarded to Oxford women who had been in residence for three years and taken a course of three examinations. The council voted to submit a petition to the Delegacy of Local Examinations asking that degrees or diplomas be conferred on women who met the prescribed conditions. It also proposed a certificate for women who opted for an alternative course that offered more flexibility. The delegates rejected the residence requirement and altered the petition so much that the AEW Council withdrew it. At a meeting on December 15, 1894, the council voted, first, to ask the university directly to admit qualified women to the BA (not to a special women’s degree) and, second, to form a committee that would consider how best to approach the university with the matter. The committee would also be empowered to examine an alternative proposal requesting that the university issue certificates to women stating their residence and qualifications. The council recommended that a special register be set up for students who were already taking the degree course and suggested that the committee consult the councils of the women’s societies, soliciting their opinions about the proposed action. The councils were duly polled. Somerville and St. Hugh’s

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voted in favor; LMH voted against (by a small majority); St. Hilda’s was not represented as it had no governing council at that time. After receiving these votes, the committee presented its report to the AEW Council on March 6, 1895, recommending that the AEW petition the university to admit qualified women to the BA degree or to confer a university certificate. The committee also ruled in favor of allowing women to compete for university prizes and scholarships. It carefully pointed out that no attempt would be made to supplicate for the MA, which would entitle holders to full membership in the university, with voting privileges in Congregation and Convocation, and which would involve constitutional changes. Everyone knew Oxford was not ready for that leap forward. The AEW announced a special meeting for May 4, 1895, to discuss the committee’s report and vote on the recommendations. Copies of the report were distributed beforehand to all association members, and it soon became apparent that supporters of women’s education in Oxford were deeply divided on the issue, with Bertha Johnson in the forefront of those who adamantly opposed the idea. Believing that the BA curriculum was “a boot made to suit men rather than women,” Mrs. Johnson approved of the special privileges accorded to women because she felt they best suited their practical needs at the time.5 She feared that if women had to concentrate on Latin and Greek for responsions at the expense of French and German, they would waste valuable time at the university and end up being less well-prepared to teach, since most girls’ schools emphasized modern instead of classical languages. She also worried that girls’ education would be adversely affected if high schools were pressured to turn out young women qualified to step right into a BA course. Mrs. Johnson wanted to delay any upheaval in the present system until it was clear what women needed most from their college experience. Annie Rogers was strongly in favor of the BA degree and believed Mrs. Johnson to be out of touch, bluntly stating that Mrs. Johnson and her supporters were “persons who knew very little about girls’ schools and who were not in the least influenced by persons who were better informed.” Miss Rogers, who considered herself one of the well-informed persons, believed that many headmistresses supported degrees for women and did not think girls’ education would be harmed. Latin already formed part of the curriculum in numerous high schools, Greek could be offered if there was special demand for it, and girls interested in further education were now being trained to go on to stricter courses of study in universities. Girls not destined for college still had plenty of “softer” options from which to choose. Miss Rogers was convinced that the elastic system for women at Oxford did them no credit in the world outside. No one knew what they had done and what their certificates actually meant. Having studied at Oxford would always count for something, of course, but she wryly ob-



Honored Guests

served that “the high opinion Oxford men had of their own university led them to exaggerate its influence.”6 AEW members turned out in force for the May 4 meeting, and many old students made a special trip to Oxford to attend. Much correspondence among interested parties had preceded the meeting, and the atmosphere was tense. Thomas Herbert Warren, president of Magdalen and the Hebdomadal Council’s representative to the AEW, made the first motion: “That it is desirable that women Students who have complied with the Statutory Regulations as regards residence and examinations should be admitted to the BA degree.”7 It was seconded. Professor Richard Lodge (Eleanor Lodge’s brother) then put forth another resolution in an attempt to conciliate the degree and antidegree parties. In addition to requesting a degree for qualified women, he also asked that a diploma be given for an alternative three-year course in which women passed three examinations: a preliminary, an intermediate, and any final honours examination recognized by the university. This proposal would enable students to bypass compulsory Greek and Latin if they wished and would ensure recognition for women who had taken the modern language examination, which was not yet an honour school at Oxford. Elizabeth Wordsworth, caught between opposing factions, seconded this proposal in a speech that was masterful for its tact and evasion. She didn’t want to alienate Professor and Mrs. Johnson, with whom she worked closely, nor did she want to oppose the AEW, Somerville, and St. Hugh’s. This alternative allowed her to support the BA for women who had fulfilled all the requirements for it. Being self-taught in the classics herself, she didn’t see Latin and Greek as insuperable barriers. Yet she believed that many women students were not ready to be channeled into the stricter BA course curriculum and wanted them to receive acknowledgment for what they had achieved. She then provoked Annie Rogers by adding that she did not approve of allowing women to compete for university prizes: “It would be very bad for girls, who are easily excited, to recite a Newdigate poem, for instance, in a crowded theatre.”8 In recording this incident later in Degrees by Degrees, Miss Rogers was able to get in a jab by noting that “such recitations took place in 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1930 without any apparent sign of undue agitation in the reciters.9

Petitions to the Hebdomadal Council Both motions carried by large majorities, and a petition containing the approved resolutions was sent to the Hebdomadal Council on May 13, 1895. Mrs. Johnson and her friends delivered a counterpetition at the same time, requesting a diploma that would indicate what course of study a woman student had followed but that was not conditional on having kept univer-

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sity residence. Bertha Johnson stood alone among the Oxford women principals in supporting this petition, and no women tutors signed it. Other petitions, pro and con, flowed into the Hebdomadal Council, including one from fifty-two headmistresses supporting a BA degree for women. Faced with all these documents, Council promptly appointed an eleven-member committee to study the issue and to consider two questions: 1. Whether the exclusion of women from the B.A. degree has been found to injure the professional prospects of women engaged in tuition; 2. Whether the admission of women to the B.A. degree would be likely, and if so in what way, injuriously to affect the education of women?10 Fourteen women educators—principals of women’s societies, headmistresses, and Annie Rogers—were invited to discuss the two issues before the committee, the first time women had ever been called to testify in front of a university body. In preparation, Annie Rogers and Agnes Maitland canvassed by letter a large number of headmistresses, girls’ teachers, women tutors, and others involved in women’s education for their opinions on the committee’s areas of inquiry. They were pleased to discover that most of the respondents supported their own views: The majority answered yes in the first instance and no in the second. The two women then printed a pamphlet for the committee that included the results of their survey and extracts from some of the replies. Though Annie Rogers felt the pamphlet was an important document, she was not sanguine about its impact: The university does not attach much importance to the opinions of schoolmasters, of whose work it knows a great deal, and it is even more indifferent to the views of schoolmistresses, of whose work it knows little.11 She proved to be prophetic. After weighing all the evidence, committee members issued their report on February 4, 1896. By a vote of seven to four, they addressed the first issue: We think it possible that the want of a degree may occasionally have proved a disadvantage to Oxford candidates, but the evidence given does not satisfy us that the cases of hardship have been of frequent occurrence.12 As for the second, the committee, by a vote of six to five, concluded:



Honored Guests

We believe that a stricter course of study would, in almost all cases, be preferable to the existing arrangements for women students, and we think this advantage may be secured by granting the degree without abolishing the freedom of choice now permitted.13 On reading the report, many members of Congregation happily accepted the committee’s view on the first issue while completely ignoring the implications of the second. Percy Gardner, Oxford professor of classical archaeology, was jubilant. He opposed degrees for women but had never­theless been concerned about inflicting hardship on those who studied at Oxford and sought employment afterward. The committee’s report banished his fears, and in a February 11, 1896, letter to the Times, he rejoiced that “we can now go forward with a lighter heart.”

Resolutions for Congregation Though the eleven-member committee had resolved the issues it had originally laid out, it could not suggest a plan of action to the Hebdomadal Council that all members would support. Instead, the committee proposed, by a majority of one, that Council present four resolutions on which Congregation would be asked to vote. According to the first resolution, women who had resided in Oxford for twelve terms and had passed (under the same regulations as men) all the examinations required for the BA would be admitted to the BA degree. Under the second, women who had resided in Oxford for twelve terms and had passed (under the same regulations as men) all the examinations required for the BA would be awarded a diploma. Under the third, women who had resided in Oxford for not less than four terms and had passed any of the exams required for the BA or any of the special women’s examinations would be awarded a certificate stating terms kept and exams passed. And under the fourth, women who had passed (under the same regulations as men) all the examinations required for the BA would be awarded a certificate stating exams passed and certifying that they satisfied the conditions under which undergraduates supplicate for the BA (with no residence in Oxford required). On February 5, a large group of men, including Mrs. Johnson’s husband, met in All Souls to declare opposition to a BA degree for women and to form a committee for organizing opponents. Those in attendance wanted a resolution that would neither impose any condition of residence nor limit women’s present freedom of choice. They therefore proposed to ask the Hebdomadal Council to add a fifth resolution to the list that would be brought before Congregation; Council subsequently agreed to include a resolution that women who had passed any exams in the Oxford

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Examinations for Women under the supervision of the Delegacy of Local Examinations would receive a diploma stating their college, hall, or other educational body, if any, and exam or exams passed. A pro-degree party met in Balliol on February 8 and agreed to support resolutions 1 and 2 and to oppose the others, especially the latest proposal from All Souls. No one from either camp was enthusiastic about resolutions 3 and 4. March 3, 1896, was the date set for Congregation to debate and vote on the first resolution. They would deal with the other four resolutions a week later, on March 10. Even before the committee finalized its report to the Hebdomadal Council in February, supporters and opponents of degrees had taken up their pens to do battle in newspapers and periodicals. Percy Gardner struck first in a lengthy letter to the Times on January 31, 1896, outlining his objections to degrees for women. He began by writing that women should be glad they were not subject to the narrow restrictions of the full degree course, which was “a bondage forced upon men,” and should treasure their present liberty. Gardner then maintained that undue pressure would be exerted on girls’ high schools to offer Latin, Greek, and mathematics instead of modern languages, music, and drawing and that young women would suffer if they had to work within a rigid system. He went on to say that, although he had taught some very capable Oxford women students, he did not approve of the “experiment of assimilating education of the sexes” and felt it was too risky for Oxford to attempt. He ended by stating that women would not be content with the BA but would eventually demand full membership in the university. As he could not believe Oxford was prepared to go that far, he urged women to remain as they were: “guests in the university—honoured and indulged guests.” On February 11, Arthur Sidgwick delivered his punch via a letter to the editor of the Times. He maintained that, over the past seventeen years, women had shown that they were increasingly prepared for the regular degree course. Most now stayed for the full three years. They took many of the same courses and examinations as men and achieved the same honours. Consequently, he questioned why they should not be awarded the same degree. “Professor Gardner cries for liberty; we have tried liberty and learned to value system.” He also discounted Gardner’s worries about girls’ secondary education and echoed Annie Rogers’s observations that Latin was already taught in all the best high schools and that Greek could be offered for those who wanted it. In his view, degrees for women would give “an immense lift” to girls’ education all over the country. Mr. Sidgwick then addressed the issue of coeducation, which he believed Professor Gardner misunderstood. Even though male and female students had attended lectures together for almost fifteen years, there was no cause for alarm. Women had not been assimilated into undergraduate culture, and no free communication existed between the two groups. Sidgwick went



Honored Guests

on to say that he doubted the BA would lead to full membership in the university: “Oxford has always taken one step at a time, and declined to take the next one till it was convinced of the wisdom of doing so.” Finally, he challenged the professor’s description of women as honored guests: “It is not my idea of honouring the guest to make her do the work and refuse her due recognition and reward.” Millicent Garrett Fawcett, a friend of Emily Davies and a leading campaigner for women’s suffrage, also joined the fray: Professor Gardner says that the position of the women students at Oxford now is that of honoured and indulged guests. I think he should have called them ‘paying guests.’ But it is true that women have received many of the advantages of university education and have not paid as much as men pay for them. They pay less because they receive less. No financial board has yet been clever enough to devise a plan for making women students pay degree fees without giving them degrees.14 Thomas Case, Oxford professor of moral philosophy, had weighed in against opening men’s examinations to women ten years earlier, and he still thought Oxford should remain a university for men. He revived the by now discredited argument that women were too delicate for strenuous academic exertion, and he championed a proposal put forth by other men (Lewis Carroll among them): the creation of a special women’s university that would administer exams and confer degrees. Professor Case believed that “a woman should be a pure vessel”; therefore, she should not mingle with men in anatomy and physiology laboratories or read the racier classical literature with them in lecture rooms lest her purity be compromised.15 He was certain that, in a women’s university, the authorities would determine what was morally proper for women to study. Almost all women involved in higher education, whether pro- or antidegree, condemned the idea of a women’s university. First, no one knew where money could be found for such a venture. Second, degrees from such a new and untried place would be worthless in comparison to those from established universities; even certificates from the older universities would carry more weight. Moreover, women were increasingly able to obtain degrees from other British universities, as Millicent Garrett Fawcett pointed out: It would indeed be a more than feminine perversity if with the four ancient Scottish Universities open to us, the Royal University in Ireland, Victoria and Durham in England, besides London as an examining university, we should still say we must have a little establishment of our own.16

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The paper warfare continued. Pamphlets, articles, and letters to the editors were churned out right up to March 3, but combatants finally laid down their pens to await the decision of Congregation.

Assembly of Congregation Three hundred and fifty-five men, a large turnout of the approximately 450 resident members entitled to vote in Congregation, assembled in the Divinity School to hear debates on the first resolution and cast their ballots. The public was not invited to attend. In a lengthy speech, T. H. Grose of the AEW moved that the first resolution be adopted, laying out reasons why he supported the resolution and refuting objections to it. James Leigh Strachan-Davidson of Balliol opposed the motion. For him, an Oxford degree symbolized a way of life, not just intellectual achievement, “because the life there stamped a special character on the man. The woman could participate in the examinations, but not in the life.” The president of Magdalen spoke next and argued for the resolution on grounds of justice. The future warden of Wadham, the Reverend Wright Henderson, opposed, saying that the arguments in favor were so subtle that most members couldn’t understand them. What he did understand was that if the degree were granted, large numbers of women would descend on Oxford, a prospect he found objectionable. By the time Professor A. V. Dicey of Trinity rose to speak, the audience was visibly restless and eager to get to the vote. Undeterred, Dicey presented an eloquent appeal in favor of degrees. He argued that women were half the nation “and the time had come when the university should take a vigorous part in guiding the education of the whole nation.” He begged members “to hesitate before opposing a movement that they could certainly delay but which they would not be able to put an end to.”17 Finally the speeches were over, and the vote was cast. The resolution lost, 215 to 140. Many of the supporters for degrees had not really expected the resolution to pass, and they were heartened by the number of votes in favor. They now felt apprehensive about the second meeting of Congregation, fearing that the fifth resolution might carry, and began to muster forces in opposition. Annie Rogers, for example, had no doubt that “a diploma to be given for anything and everything” would forever stifle the forward progress of women’s education at Oxford.18 When Congregation reconvened on March 10, Professor Henry Pelham of Trinity began by proposing resolution 2, admitting it was but a half measure but arguing that it was better than nothing and certainly better than resolution 5. He accused the university of ignoring requests from all over the country for degrees, or at least diplomas, and maintained:



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They were told they [the university] were not to be disturbed, and that Professor Gardner was watching the sky for omens, and therefore the university must wait.19 His speech was to no avail, and members defeated the resolution 178 to 111. Resolution 3 was brought forward but was rejected by almost everyone. Professor Edward Caird, master of Balliol, who said he spoke as an advocate for women in Oxford, declared that all the alternative resolutions “were objectionable, and the last contemptible.”20 He asserted that supporters of degrees would rather have nothing than only a piecemeal measure. The motion lost by 284 votes to 11. R. W. Macan, soon to be master of University College, spoke in favor of the fourth resolution and urged those who wouldn’t accept half a loaf because they couldn’t have a whole one not to block progress. He tried to inject some humor into the debate by declaring that he had subjected the fifth resolution to the new Roentgen rays and discovered no backbone. Resolution 4 was necessary to supply the vertebral column, he said. Not lacking in backbones themselves, members were not swayed, and the motion went down, 254 votes to 35. Finally, the last resolution, so disliked by supporters of degrees, was proposed. Lewis Farnell of Exeter spoke in favor, saying the proposal was the maximum Oxford ought to allow. Opposing, Professor Pelham believed the university would be discredited if it issued diplomas that meant nothing to the public. Congregation proceeded to vote on the resolution and awaited the count with considerable excitement. The balloting was extremely close, but the resolution was defeated, 140 to 136.

Aftermath of the Vote Congregation had decided that women would remain as “honoured guests” of the university. Yet many degree supporters saw hope in the defeat. The fifth resolution had not carried, which they considered a victory for their side. They discovered more allies in Oxford than they had known existed. Degrees for women had received serious attention from prominent university men, and many had offered favorable comments about the way women students had conducted themselves in Oxford, both academically and socially. Most important, the degree battle had not given rise to any pronounced antifemale feelings, as was the case when Cambridge debated the same issue, and neither supporters nor opponents of degrees at Oxford were dug in behind unbreachable walls. Although some of the exchanges between opposing sides seemed heated, Annie Rogers claimed that good-natured cheerfulness, not acrimony, characterized the whole campaign. Of course,

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she loved a good fight and had a thick skin to boot, so her perception may have been biased. Bertha Johnson was certainly saddened by the difference of opinion between her and others with whom she had worked closely in Oxford, but she never wavered in her belief that a degree was premature at that time. No permanent rifts occurred, however, and all those involved in women’s education soon went back to their task of trying to work within the Oxford system to obtain the best education for the students under their supervision. The university may have been wary of extending full membership to women, but it maintained the spirit of compromise and accommodation that had characterized many of its dealings with them. By necessity, women had long ago learned how to work for their own benefit within this environment. The AEW wasted little time in trying to ameliorate the professional disadvantage that lack of a degree imposed on women from Oxford. By the summer of 1896, the association had drawn up plans to grant a BA diploma to students who qualified for the BA degree and two alternative certificates for those who elected to study under less strict conditions. These awards were to be issued from the AEW only, not from the university. Following the recommendation of its council, the AEW also opened a special register for students who were following the full degree course, and 36 women entered their names, out of the 180 on the AEW student register. Ethel Watkins, a Home-Student (with Mrs. Johnson as her principal, ironically), was the first woman to fulfill all the requirements of examination and residence for the BA degree. Somerville, again setting itself apart from the AEW and provoking Annie Rogers’s disapproval, opted to award its own diplomas: one for students who qualified for the BA in terms of examinations and residence and one for students who, though keeping twelve terms of residence and taking a final honours examination, chose not to take any intermediate exams. Most Somerville students were encouraged, if at all possible, to obtain full degree qualifications. Twenty-four years would pass before Oxford awarded BA degrees to women. In the interim, Trinity College Dublin came to the rescue of numerous Oxford and Cambridge women who wanted a BA after they had done all the work to qualify for it. When Trinity College opened its doors to women in 1904, it offered for a limited period (until 1907) degrees to female students from Oxford and Cambridge who had kept the residence and examination requirements of their institutions. The degrees were not cheap. The BA cost approximately ten pounds and the MA a further nine pounds, plus the expense of traveling to Dublin. Despite the cost, more than seven hundred women took advantage of this degree opportunity. Known as the “steamboat ladies” because they traveled to Ireland by boat, these women demonstrated how much they valued a BA degree. The bene­



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fit was not all one-sided. From the fees collected, Trinity College was able to establish a residence for its women undergraduates.21 Annie Rogers declared that the fight for degrees was a “bold adventure and one in which success could hardly have been expected,” but she and her pro-degree colleagues never doubted that their time would come. 22 Unfortunately, some of the most ardent supporters did not live to see the final victory. One prescient observer summarized what was in the minds of many degree advocates at the time of seeming defeat: The novelty of the proposal will wear off and the fears at once perfectly natural and perfectly unreasonable, which drove many members of the university to the verge of panic, will die away. The case is primarily one of those, frequent in politics, in which opinions are not changed deliberately out of deference to convincing arguments but are unconsciously modified by the silent influence of circumstances.23 Time helps too. An idea that initially seems radical often becomes less so with age.

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ooking at Oxford in the nineteenth century from the vantage    point of the twenty-first, it would be easy to characterize the uni  versity as an old-fashioned and hidebound institution that refused to grant degrees to women at a time when other British universities were turning out graduates of both sexes. Yet Oxford had undergone significant reforms during the nineteenth century that revitalized and modernized the university (see Chapter 2). In this respect, Oxford resembled the nation at large—dynamic change on the one hand and slow adaptation, especially in regard to women, on the other.

A Dynamic Era By 1890, Victoria had reigned for fifty-three years—a period of dramatic economic, political, social, and intellectual upheaval. Indeed, England had been so transformed since Victoria was crowned in 1837 that it seemed as if hundreds of years had been shoehorned into a single lifetime. Britain was the first country to become industrialized, exploiting steam power to lead the world in manufacturing, mining, and shipping. Technological advances made factories more productive, communication speedier and more accessible, printing presses more efficient, and even childbirth more comfortable (Queen Victoria was administered “that blessed chloroform” during the birth of her eighth child in 1853).1 The first railway line was opened in 1830, covering less than forty miles between Liverpool and Manchester. By 1900, more than twenty thousand miles of train tracks crisscrossed the country, producing “profound changes . . . in the pace as well as the place of living.”2 England was no longer an agrarian society. For the first time in history, revealed as early as the 1851 census, more people lived in towns than in the country. London had once been the only sizable city in Britain, but other towns, mostly in Scotland and the North, saw their populations swell to over 100,000. The Reform Bill of 1832 extended voting privileges to many men of the rising middle class and abolished an outdated electoral system. By 1870, civil servants were chosen by open competition, not patronage, which 112



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helped insure that the machinery of government would run smoothly, regardless of which party was in power. The middle classes, newly enfranchised in 1832, capitalized on the economic boom and grew to be a powerful force in British society, virtually running industrial England. They were largely Noncomformists (outside the Church of England) and Evangelicals (within the Church of England), and the values of their faith— hard work, thrift, enthusiasm for reform, veneration of family life, and moral respectability—became the dominant ones of the age. The working classes, crowding into cities and often laboring under intolerable conditions, excited the concern of many Victorian humanitarians, including the novelist Charles Dickens. A number of reforms were enacted that eased workers’ lives and improved their standard of living. Many working-class men won the right to vote after the Second Reform Bill of 1867, and they found new political clout with the rise of trade unions. Writers and intellectuals were prominent in this changing, dynamic society. Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and George Meredith are some of the impressive names that crop up on any list of Victorian novelists, and poets were well represented by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Intellectual giants such as Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, John Ruskin, Thomas Huxley, and John Henry Newman provoked and stimulated the reading public with their books and essays. Scientific discoveries, particularly those of Darwin (the Origin of Species was published in 1859), altered the way people thought about humanity’s place in the history of the earth, eroding religious certainty. John Ruskin once exclaimed: “If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful hammers! I hear the chink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.”3 Women’s names also crop up when one looks at the sweep of Victorian literature. The works of novelists Charlotte and Emily Bronte, George ­Eliot, and Elizabeth Gaskell and poets Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning have all stood the test of time. Barrett Browning wrote Aurora Leigh in 1857, an immensely popular verse novel of eleven thousand lines that dealt with an issue considered daring for the time: the dilemma of the woman artist who has to choose between her vocation and marriage. Virginia Woolf later wrote that “Aurora Leigh, with her passionate interest in social questions, her conflict as artist and woman, her longing for knowledge and freedom, is the true daughter of her age.”4

Women in Victorian England Apart from literature, however, this energetic world of industry, politics, and science was definitely a male one. Certainly, women benefited from the

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technological and economic advances, and we have seen the door to higher education at least cracked, if not flung wide open. But there was nothing dynamic about the rate of progress toward equal rights for women; its pace resembled the snail’s, not the racehorse’s. When Victoria was crowned monarch, women were effectively second-class citizens: They could not vote or hold office; they were barred from most professions; their educational opportunities were almost nonexistent; if married, they could not own or control property, even property they brought into marriage; they had no rights over their children; and they were rarely allowed to divorce their husbands. Women’s lives were not immune to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, but by comparison they may have seemed to step backward while the country hurtled forward. Working-class women, an important source of labor for England’s factories and mines, were often treated little better than slaves. They received lower wages than men for the same work, and their domestic burdens could be crushing. The Factory Acts, enacted between 1833 and 1867, improved conditions in the ­workplace, but poverty, disease, and childbearing continued to take their toll. Middle-class women, the primary focus here, were encouraged to be consumers, not producers, their leisure symbolizing the economic success of the men on whom they depended. By midcentury, society had responded to the strains of modernization and the influence of religious conservatism by creating a cult of domesticity: The home was exalted as a refuge from the hectic outside world, and woman was elevated as the pure and selfless guardian of the hearth, the standard-bearer of morality. The image of woman as “the angel in the house” was often at odds with reality.5 Many middle-class women remained unmarried and had to earn their own living, for reasons already noted. Married women and unmarried daughters at home did not always relish their enforced idleness, particularly in a society where hard work and self-improvement were lauded. They may well have echoed the sentiments expressed in Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley when one heroine asks the other if she ever wished she had a profession. “I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often wonder what I came into the world for. I long to have something absorbing and compulsory to fill my head and hands, and to occupy my thoughts.”6 Without absorbing work, large numbers turned to philanthropy as an outlet for their energy and sense of social duty, and it is safe to say that the numerous charitable organizations in Victorian Britain could not have carried on without their unpaid labor. For some women, this voluntary work had unexpected benefits. It brought them into intimate contact with the social problems of the day from which many women were shielded and



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led them to active involvement in local municipal affairs and political and social reform movements, including women’s rights campaigns. The first women’s suffrage committees were formed in 1865 to support John Stuart Mill, who had been newly elected to Parliament, in his campaign to propose an amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill that would give women the vote. Parliament rejected the idea, but the suffrage movement didn’t fade away, even though the struggle for the vote proved long and difficult. Women over thirty, if householders or wives of householders, were enfranchised in 1918 and full suffrage finally came in 1928. A series of Married Women’s Property Acts, enacted between 1870 and 1908, significantly improved the ability of married women to manage their own property, but divorce laws remained unfavorable to them until the 1920s. Education was the arena in which middle-class women made their most considerable strides between 1837 and 1890. In 1837, girls had few schools to choose from, if they were allowed to attend at all, and women had no access to higher education. By 1890, good-quality girls’ schools had sprung up all over the country; women could earn degrees from a number of universities and colleges and could study, though not earn a degree, from the two most ancient institutions, Oxford and Cambridge. Although higher education for women was still a comparatively new phenomenon in 1890, foes and supporters alike knew that it was no fad. It was recognized—and sometimes feared—as a harbinger of greater changes to come.

Changing Standards During the final decade of the nineteenth century, the long rule of Victorian standards began breaking down. The values that had been held in such high regard—moral earnestness, hard work, and thrift—were now sometimes questioned and even ridiculed. Victorianism increasingly came to represent hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and repression. Confident assumptions about Britain’s preeminence in the world of commerce also came under siege as the country’s economic superiority diminished. When Queen Victoria died in 1901, people sensed that the old order had changed and that they were entering a less secure era. Symbolic of the changing times was the “New Woman,” a phrase coined by writer Sarah Grand (pseudonym of Frances Elizabeth McFall) in 1894. In the literature of the period, the New Woman stood for women’s suffrage, educational and employment opportunities, sensible clothing, and the abolition of sexual double standards. She was no doubt a product of the changes in women’s status as the Victorian era progressed. By 1900, women were no longer assumed to be possessions of their husbands. As English feminist Ray Strachey put it: “British women were, in the main, free, both in their persons and their properties, their minds and their consciences, their bodies and their souls.”7 They had overcome many barriers

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to education, they were politically active at both local and national levels, and they were beginning to gain access to some professions. Never had women’s issues received so much attention as in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and as a result, a woman’s sphere of action had enlarged. There was still vast room for improvement, but a woman could now look out into the world and see that she had a possible place in it, as an individual and not as an appendage. Many of the women students who passed through Oxford in the 1890s and early in the new century were eager to play a role in this larger world, even if they did not yet know what that role would be. This generation (roughly 1890–1910) of Oxford women students was the first that did not have to opt for the traditional female occupations of schoolteacher or headmistress (though the majority still did) if they wanted to work at all. By the 1890s, employment opportunities in the relatively new profession of higher education for women had expanded, and intellectually gifted women were increasingly drawn to that field. An impressive number of Oxford women from this era also became well known in both national and international circles as scholars, social activists, and writers. Some of them were trailblazers, but almost all worked within the institutional structures of society to make their contributions and effect change.

Higher Education as a Profession for Women The Oxford women’s colleges bolstered their resident tutorial staffs by hiring university-trained women, and they were often partial to those from the Oxford system. A sizable number of former students distinguished themselves as scholars and tutors at Oxford. Although the position of tutor beckoned to academically minded women, it was not, as noted earlier, always a plum job. In many institutions, women tutors had little power to direct the education of their students, and their role was often ill defined. Because of financial constraints, they were frequently asked to wear many hats besides that of tutor—lecturer, career advisor, disciplinarian, and chaperone, among others—and their heavy workload left them little time for scholarly research. Cases of nervous exhaustion were not uncommon. Yet when the situation was right (as was more common in the women’s colleges at Oxford, Cambridge, and the university of London), the role of resident tutor could be satisfying for educated women. It also had the potential to lead to more senior positions within academic institutions, although few women rose above the rank of lecturer.8 Oxford women of this period also took charge of women students at other institutions as principals of colleges or heads of residence hostels. Emily Penrose (Somerville 1889) was appointed principal of Bedford College, London, in 1893 and then moved on to the principalship of the Royal Holloway College, London, in 1898. She won high praise for her admin-



The New Woman

istrative talents and was instrumental in guiding both institutions into the University of London as constituent colleges. Eleanor Lodge, after a long career as history tutor and vice-principal of LMH, left Oxford to become principal of Westfield College, London, in 1921, where she, like Emily Penrose, helped effect her college’s union with the University of London. The road to incorporation did not, however, always go smoothly, as Hilda Oakeley learned to her cost. A Somerville student of 1895, she went to King’s College London in 1907 to head the Women’s Department, succeeding Lilian Faithfull. She had expectations of developing the department into a fully independent women’s college, and the initial signs were encouraging. In the wake of restructuring, however, King’s College determined to promote home science as an important educational innovation for women, and many men and women enthusiastically supported the scheme. The upshot was that King’s College for Women was virtually dismantled and replaced by the Department of Household and Social Science. After much turmoil, Hilda Oakeley resigned in 1915. (Her successor’s title was tutor of women students, an indication of how the status of the job had been downgraded.)9 It was not uncommon for job titles to change and other problems to arise as colleges and universities struggled to determine how best to incorporate women into their institutions. A number of women who accepted positions of responsibility in this new area often found themselves embroiled in controversy. Winifred Mercier is a case in point. A Somervillian of the new century, Mercier went to Oxford in 1904 and left with a first in history in 1907. For four years, she was a popular history tutor at Girton, but her strong interest in elementary education led her to accept a viceprincipalship at the City of Leeds Municipal Training College in 1913, a coeducational teacher-training institution. Trouble quickly developed. Winifred felt that the position had been misrepresented to her and that the authority she had been promised was being undermined at every turn. She resigned in 1916, along with nine women tutors at the college, after a bitter and public fight with the principal and other education officials. In 1918, she was appointed principal of Whitelands College in London, a Church of England establishment for training women elementary school teachers. Here, she was firmly in charge, maintaining, and even enhancing, the reputation of Whitelands as one of the finest training colleges in the country. When new college buildings were dedicated in 1931, Queen Mary and the archbishop of Canterbury were among the notables in attendance to honor Winifred Mercier.10 As had been true in the 1880s, the Oxford women’s colleges certainly did not hesitate to look to their own when leadership positions became available, and they reaped significant benefit from the students who were in attendance between 1890 and 1910. Nine returned to become principals, often skillfully guiding their colleges through periods of crisis and

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transition. Somerville produced five: Emily Penrose, principal of Somerville, 1907–1926; Margery Fry, principal of Somerville, 1926–1931; Helen Darbishire, principal of Somerville, 1931–1945; Julia de Lacy Mann, principal of St. Hilda’s, 1928–1955; and Grace Hadow, principal of the Oxford Home-Students, 1929–1940. Lady Margaret Hall claimed three from this generation: Christine Burrows, principal of St. Hilda’s, 1910–1919, and of the Home-Students, 1921–1929; Winifred Moberly, principal of St. Hilda’s, 1919–1928; and Barbara Gwyer, principal of St. Hugh’s, 1924–1946. LMH could also point to Eleanor Jourdain, a student of the 1880s, who succeeded Miss Moberly at St. Hugh’s in 1915 and died in office in 1924. Universities that had opened their doors to women were increasingly under pressure to provide residential housing for them, and hostels for women became more numerous toward the end of the nineteenth century. Naturally, university authorities needed women to run them, and they often looked to the new generation of college-educated women to employ as wardens. The job could be a difficult one. The pay was often low; the warden had many duties—domestic, administrative, financial, academic, and pastoral—and usually had to cope with them alone; and there were few role models from whom to seek guidance. Margery Fry became such a role model when she left the librarian’s job at Somerville in 1904 to preside as warden of women students at Birmingham University. A male cousin indignantly declared that Margery was just going “to housekeep over a hencoop in a provincial suburban villa,” and there were times she might have agreed with him.11 The post was not entirely congenial to her, but she made a rousing success of it before retiring in 1914. She had a gift for fostering a sense of community and loyalty. Firm but liberal, she created an atmosphere of friendliness and informality in which many women under her care believed “their powers were discovered and set free.”12 Several of Margery Fry’s contemporaries were inspired by her success as they struggled to define the warden’s role and to create communities where young women could thrive.

Women outside Academic Life Scholars While academia lured some university-trained Oxford women, others pursued their scholarly interests outside university walls and made significant contributions to their fields. Barbara Bradby came to LMH in 1892, ten years after her sister Dorothy went down. She too had a particular gift for historical scholarship, but unlike the work of other distinguished historians from LMH, hers became well known in both academic and nonacademic settings. Bradby had the same electric effect on her college contemporaries as had Gertrude Bell, for her personality was as vivid as her red hair. She was also an exceptional student, the first woman to achieve first-



The New Woman

class honours in both classical moderations and greats. During her time in Oxford, an anonymous undergraduate’s lament circulated throughout the student population, and it was widely recognized that Barbara inspired it: I spent all my time with a crammer, And then only managed a gamma, But the girl over there, With the flaming red hair, Got an alpha plus easily—damn her! When Bradby married Oxford graduate J. L. Hammond in 1901, a formidable partnership began. The couple produced monumental social and economic histories of the Industrial Revolution that were both scholarly and accessible to a wide reading public. Oxford recognized their joint authorship by awarding each of them an honorary doctorate in 1933. Two other LMH students, Margaret Jourdain (1894) and Katharine A. Esdaile (1900), also made their mark as historians, but in fields very different from Barbara Hammond’s. Margaret Jourdain, sister to Eleanor Jourdain (although there was little sisterly love between them), became an acknowledged authority on English furniture and the decorative arts. For years after leaving Oxford, she tried to escape family obligations but was unable to earn enough money as a writer to live independently. Her life took an upward turn in 1919 when she met novelist Ivy Compton­Burnett in London. They quickly established a firm friendship, and Margaret moved into Ivy’s flat. The two became well known among London’s literary circles, even though they were an eccentric pair who could be forbidding as well as amusing. Katharine Esdaile developed her love of antique sculpture while still an Oxford student, but, after leaving university, she put career ideas on hold by opting for marriage and motherhood. After her third (and last) child was born in 1919, she felt free to begin an intensive study of postmedieval sculpture in England. In 1927 and 1928, Esdaile published significant books in her field that showed her breadth of knowledge as an art historian. To recognize and honor her literary and historical contributions, the Royal Society of Arts awarded her a medal in 1928. Somerville claimed two important scholars in Rose Graham (1894) and Beatrice Blackwood (1908). Graham’s books and articles on medieval ecclesiastical history were critically well received, and her standing was such that she became one of the first two women to be elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1920. Although she got only a second in her final schools in 1898, Oxford recognized her first-rate abilities by awarding her a DLitt in 1929. Only one other woman had received this distinction. Eleanor Lodge (LMH 1890) was honored with a DLitt in 1928 for her original and insightful contributions as a history scholar. Beatrice Blackwood, internationally known for her work as an anthropologist and ethnologist, pursued her career right up to her death at the

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age of eighty-six. She had a special interest in the Pacific and carried out important fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Her obituary in Folklore noted that “she, being small of stature, would enter difficult and narrow caves to make sure that the bulkier male prehistorians could safely follow!”13 From 1916 to 1975, Blackwood made valuable contributions to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, had contacts all over the world, and published in numerous learned journals. In 1948, she, like Rose Graham before her, was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Katharine Routledge (Somerville 1891) carried out the first survey of Easter Island while on expedition there with her husband. Her research was detailed and comprehensive, and her book, The Mystery of Easter Island (1919), is considered a classic. Unfortunately, mental illness cut short her productive life, and she died in a mental institution in 1935.

Reformers Finding useful and absorbing work was not always easy for women in the late nineteenth century. For those who craved entry to an active and rewarding life, social activism was often the key. The nineteenth century was the great age of social reform, so reform-minded women found no shortage of causes to engage them. Social work also resolved a problem that troubled newly educated women of independent means. Concerned whether they should accept paid employment when other women needed financial help, they assuaged their consciences by volunteering or working for a pittance in social reform movements. Though Victorians had long considered philanthropy appropriate for women, believing that it called on their particular qualities of tenderness and compassion, such work necessarily involved them in the outside world. It gave many women the confidence to expand their public activities and to become more politically involved, particularly in campaigns to improve the lives of women and children. A number of former Oxford students gained prominence as social reformers whose work had an impact both nationally and internationally. Cornelia Sorabji (see Chapter 5) was one of the first Somervillians with a long career of public service, but other Somerville women would match her record in the coming years. Even by its second decade of existence, Somerville had developed a distinct identity; it was known for fostering academic excellence, political involvement, and commitment to social concerns. Because the college was nondenominational, it attracted more Noncomformists than did the other women’s societies, and Unitarians and Quakers—long affiliated with humanitarian issues—exerted a strong influence. As representatives of Somervillians from a Noncomformist tradition, Eleanor Rathbone and Margery Fry would become two of the most prominent social activists of their day. Eleanor Rathbone (Somerville 1893) came from a long line of Quakers



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and Unitarians who were notable in the Liverpool region for their devotion to liberal causes and to improving the well-being of others. Despite their wealth, the Rathbones held a strong belief in personal austerity and fru­ gality, coupled with a strong sense of social responsibility. Eleanor Rathbone proved no exception to the family tradition. When Eleanor entered Somerville in 1893, she was the first Rathbone to attend either Oxford or Cambridge, because these universities had been closed to Noncomformists until 1871. She came across as a serious young woman with little or no interest in her apparel, small talk, or the opposite sex. While at Somerville, she felt most comfortable with women whose intellect, social concerns, and serious attitude toward life corresponded with her own. She, with resident tutor Mildred Pope, instituted a small in-college discussion group to explore contemporary social and economic issues in a free and unrestrained way. Membership was by invitation only, and this select group called themselves the A.Ps., which members knew stood for Associated Prigs (indicating that they could poke fun at their high-mindedness). Mary Stocks, Eleanor Rathbone’s biographer, summed up the group’s composition: The A.P.s were not a cross-section of the population. They were a selected few; a small circle of first-rate minds distilled from a student body which in those far-off days of pioneer female education, was itself a distillation of young women emanating from abnormally enlightened homes and impelled by abnormally serious purpose. Their sessions were often spirited but never frivolous; “austerely earnest,” a phrase redolent of Victorianism, best captures both the discussions and the members themselves.14 Politics and suffragism claimed Rathbone’s attention immediately after Oxford. In 1909, she became the first woman elected to the Liverpool City Council, a position she held for twenty-five years. She also took a leading role in local and national suffrage societies and was elected president of the NUSEC (National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship), a nonmilitant wing of the suffrage movement, in 1919, a position she used to campaign hard for one of her most cherished ideas—family allowances.15 By this scheme, the state would pay a wage to women with children to confirm motherhood as an occupation worthy of remuneration and to reduce a wife’s economic dependence on her husband. Parliament debated the proposal on and off for years until finally adopting a Family Allowance Bill in 1945. Although the bill fell short of Rathbone’s initial vision, she still felt deep satisfaction at its passing. Her feminist work took on international dimensions after 1927 when she resolved to improve the status of women in India and determined that a parliamentary seat was a necessary first step in attaining that goal (women

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had achieved the right to stand for Parliament in 1918). In 1929, she was elected as an independent member for the Combined English Universities, which allowed her to be free of any political ties, and she retained this seat until her death in 1946.16 For several years, Rathbone worked tirelessly on Indian affairs, but she felt her accomplishments were limited, partly owing to Indian distrust of British interference. Eleanor Rathbone did not restrict her humanitarian efforts to women. As Europe drew closer to war in 1939, she was already involved in relief schemes for refugees, a cause to which she remained devoted throughout the war. She also labored long and effectively for aliens interned as enemies and gained the release of numerous men and women who were no threat to British interests. Rathbone’s intensity could make her an alarming figure. In his book Prudent Revolutionaries, Brian Harrison maintains that “you thought twice before making a joke in her presence, for her dedication to her causes was complete.”17 The writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson, an MP between 1935 and 1945, wrote a tribute after Rathbone’s death in which he acknowledged that she sometimes made herself a nuisance. He described her as “benign and yet menacing” and claimed that her parliamentary colleagues would sometimes recoil in terror when they saw her bearing down on them in the corridors.18 When Rathbone died suddenly in 1946, she was genuinely mourned, not only by friends and loved ones but also by countless people for whom she had been a fighter and protector. Mary Stocks called her a practical Christian who believed wholeheartedly that it was her duty to work for others’ welfare. “Indeed an analysis of her religious views . . . might suggest that she had assumed the burdens of Christianity without accepting its consolations. With most of us it is, of course, the other way about.”19 Like Eleanor Rathbone, Margery Fry was born into a well-to-do family that stressed the virtues of plain living. Similarly, too, her Quaker background instilled in her a social conscience and desire for justice. Margery’s parents had no enthusiasm for sending her to Somerville, but they succumbed to her pleading with one stipulation: She would not take any final examinations. Her mother thought they were unfeminine; her father felt they were unnecessary, since his daughter would never need to worry about earning her own living. Their demand put Miss Maitland in a bit of a bind. She wanted Somerville to be worthy of college status, which meant encouraging students to follow a degree course as closely as possible. Yet when she looked at Margery Fry’s eager, anxious face during an interview with her and her parents in July 1894, Miss Maitland impulsively decided to accept her. College proved stimulating, but Fry was unsure what she wanted to do with her life, beyond some vague yearnings for a purpose. After her stint as librarian at Somerville and warden of women students at Birmingham,



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she was weary of institutional life. Her brother Roger, the eminent art critic and Bloomsbury intimate, urged her to come to London, saying, “It’s time you cultivated the power of living without doing.”20 World War I was almost upon them, however, and thoughts of idleness had to be shelved. Margery Fry and her sister Ruth went to France in 1915 as part of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, and there she stayed for the next two years, laboring on behalf of refugees. After the war, Fry was drawn into the concerns that would shape the direction of much of her life: penal reform and education. As secretary of the Penal Reform League, she worked to improve prison conditions and was instrumental in effecting a union with the older and more prosperous Howard Association. In 1919, she was invited to join the University Grants Committee, an organization formed to administer state aid to universities, and she sat on the committee for twenty-nine years, the only woman member. Fry interrupted her prison and grants committee work when she accepted the principalship of Somerville in 1926, a position she kept for only five years. Her tenure there will receive more attention later, but as at Birmingham, she showed her practical genius for calmly and efficiently guiding an institution. On retiring from Somerville in 1931, Fry moved to London and again immersed herself in penal reform. She expanded her concern to an international level, lobbying the League of Nations in Geneva in 1935 to adopt minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners all over the world. She continually shouldered new commitments and remained vigorously interested in her various projects into her eighties, when illness finally slowed her down. She died in 1958 at the age of eighty-four. Other Somervillians who became prominently involved in social issues were Stella Browne (1899), Evelyn Fox (1895), and Lettice Ilbert (1894). Stella Browne was one of a small band of pioneers who advocated greater sexual freedom for women. As early as 1912, she wrote an article maintaining that women, married or unmarried, had a right to sexual pleasure. She supported Dora Russell (Bertrand Russell’s second wife) in the struggle to bring birth control information to the working classes and became very active in this movement, lecturing extensively during the 1920s and early 1930s all over Britain. Browne was even more radical in her outspoken advocacy for the legalization of abortion. She insisted that abortion was a woman’s right, not a procedure to be employed only in extreme cases, and publicly admitted having had one herself. She faded from the public scene when she moved to Liverpool to live with her sister, and, although she continued to write letters to the press in favor of legalizing abortion, this “little, indomitable, unrespectable, fanatical foghorn of a feminist” died, largely forgotten, in 1955.21 Evelyn Fox, who preceded Browne at Somerville, tirelessly campaigned

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to improve the lives of the mentally ill and the mentally defective, an unglamorous field that had received little public attention. When the Mental Deficiency Act was passed in 1913, she threw herself into efforts to implement the act on local and national levels, initiating training courses for teachers and lobbying for community care and occupation centers. Fox became Dame Evelyn in 1947 when she was made DBE, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.22 Lettice Ilbert, a year ahead of Fox at Somerville, combined numerous roles in her long and productive life. In 1899, she married H.A.L. Fisher, fellow of New College, and became a great support to him in his various careers as educator, academic administrator, and member of Parliament. Their daughter Mary followed her mother to Somerville and in 1965 became principal of St. Hilda’s. Between 1902 and 1913, Lettice Fisher was a history tutor at St. Hugh’s and economics tutor for the AEW, and during those years in Oxford, she got actively involved in local social work, particularly with infant welfare. Her work among Oxford’s poor led her to found the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child in 1918 and to serve as its chair for more than thirty years. Laboring on behalf of women and children who had not traditionally received much sympathy, the council sought reforms that would allow unmarried mothers to obtain support from the fathers of their children and to work themselves so that they could keep their children. According to one historian, the council’s sole object was helping women “with their desperate practical problems and leaving their immortal souls alone. It was the first-ever helping hand of the kind without a deterrent in it.”23 Lady Margaret Hall did not have Somerville’s reputation for strong individualism. Students there were often stereotyped as churchy and conservative, unwilling to disrupt the status quo. No doubt freethinkers were less attracted to this institution with its staunch Church of England connection; yet the stereotypical view was not entirely accurate, as the lives of Janet Courtney and Gertrude Bell attest. During the 1890s, the college fostered a number of intelligent and strong-minded women who made their mark in the outside world. They became humanitarians, suffragists, and in one remarkable case, a preacher. Miss Wordsworth did not always approve of their postcollege activities—she had little sympathy with the woman’s movement, for example—but she would defend their right to pursue what was important to them. One who did find favor with Miss Wordsworth was Eglantyne Jebb (1895), founder of Save the Children Fund, for she combined seriousness of purpose with a ladylike demeanor and strong religious convictions. Her background was one of privilege, but her parents were always ready to help the less fortunate, an example that Eglantyne easily absorbed. Unlike her parents, however, she felt ashamed of the wealthy and class-ridden world she lived in and longed for a sense of mission.



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Eglantyne Jebb tried to teach after leaving Oxford but was persuaded by her mother to give it up for health reasons (thyroid troubles plagued her all her life). From 1900 to 1914, she channeled her energies into charitable work in Cambridge but was often tormented by feelings of inadequacy. An opportunity for more useful work came during World War I. Jebb and her sister Dorothy, along with a crew of translators, began publishing weekly extracts from foreign newspapers (allied, neutral, and enemy) in the Cambridge Magazine in an effort to combat the one-sided view of the war prevalent in England. The magazine was widely read, and many people found these extracts valuable. Thomas Hardy, an avid weekly reader, commented that the newspapers “transport one to the Continent and enable one to see England bare and unadorned, freed from distortion by the glamour of patriotism.”24 This activity made the sisters unpopular in some quarters, but they were unrepentant, believing that opposition would only enable them to determine who their real friends were. Reading through the foreign newspapers, it became impossible for ­Eglantyne and Dorothy to ignore the suffering of innocent people in Europe as the war dragged on. Millions were starving, and the armistice scarcely eased their plight. In response, the sisters formed a Fight the Famine Council in January 1919, enlisting the support of many influential people. Their goal was to end the blockade of enemy countries and get Europe’s economy going again. They were not yet in the fund-raising business; they were merely trying to rouse public sympathy for the appalling conditions on the Continent. Before long, however, the sisters wanted more concrete results—food, clothing, and shelter for destitute European children—and they initiated the Save the Children Fund in May 1919. Eglantyne Jebb took over direct control of the SCF and immediately set about soliciting money. A persuasive campaigner, she overcame much opposition toward helping “enemy” children. Many countries initiated relief societies as a result of the publicity generated by SCF appeals, and Jebb quickly saw the need for unified action. In January 1920, she inaugurated the Save the Children Fund International Union, which undertook vast relief administration in Europe and Asia. She wanted the SCF to develop into a permanent body that would exist for the protection of children every­ where. To that end, she drafted a Declaration of the Rights of the Child and presented it to the League of Nations, which unanimously adopted the charter on September 16, 1924. Jebb spent the last years of her life in Geneva, where she continued the laborious task of raising money and support for the children’s movement, a more difficult job once the urgency of the immediate postwar period was over. The work exacerbated an already delicate constitution, leaving her often ill and exhausted. She died from a sudden stroke on December 17, 1928, aged fifty-two. Kathleen Courtney (1897) and Maude Royden (1896), two students

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who overlapped with Eglantyne Jebb at LMH, set off on paths that were certain to evoke Elizabeth Wordsworth’s disapproval. They both became dedicated suffrage campaigners, which was bad enough in her eyes, but one of them committed an even greater offense to the proper order of things when she challenged the Church of England’s ban on women in the ministry. Courtney and Royden became lifelong friends at LMH and, before World War I, were very active in the women’s movement, concentrating much of their energy in the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the nonmilitant arm of the movement eventually renamed the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC) (see note 15). Taking pacifist stances at the outbreak of war, the two women broke with the NUWSS over the prowar policy of its president, Millicent Fawcett; they believed that feminism and militarism were irreconcilable. Courtney and Royden instead allied themselves with the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, an organization created in 1915 to promote world disarmament, women’s rights, and racial and economic justice. Courtney continued to work for peace and disarmament after the war and championed the League of Nations, speaking all over the world on its behalf. She later supported the United Nations and in 1974, at the age of ninety-six, she received the UN Peace Medal in recognition of her work toward international cooperation. Maude Royden’s career took a more singular turn than Kathleen’s after the war, one that led her away from the platform and into the pulpit. Perhaps such a step was inevitable. Royden was always interested in the religious and ethical aspects of the women’s movement, not just the political ones. She fervently believed that sexual equality was an integral part of Christ’s teachings and, in 1915, began a campaign to get women admitted to church governing bodies and to the priesthood. Hers was a controversial position, to say the least. A year earlier, a writer for the Church Times, having heard that ordination for women was being discussed in some ­circles, declared: “For any sane person, the thing is so absolutely grotesque that he must refuse to discuss it.”25 Royden’s background seemed an unlikely one to foster a radical. Although she declared herself “a born feminist,” Maude was the youngest of eight children in a wealthy, conventional Victorian family. Her parents were lenient, tolerant people, and when Maude insisted on going to school (something her five older sisters did not do), they raised no objection to sending her to one of the best: Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Only later did her mother reveal some ambivalence about this decision when she remarked to Maude that her education had been as expensive as her brothers’. I realised by the tone of her voice that this was a surprising and rather shocking thing. . . . Why shouldn’t it cost as much as a boy’s? I could not understand. . . . But I was furious.26



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When Maude asked for permission to study at Oxford, her parents acquiesced on condition that Lady Margaret Hall would be her destination. Somerville would have been unthinkable for the daughter of such solid Anglicans and Tories. It is possible that their daughter’s lameness (Royden was born with dislocated hips) influenced her parents’ conciliatory attitude toward her education. Sheila Fletcher, her biographer, speculated that the Roydens might have been dubious about Maude’s value on the marriage market and saw higher education as compensation.27 After college, Royden sharpened the oratorical skills she had developed at Oxford by speaking at numerous suffrage and peace rallies, but she also wanted to use her talent in the service of religion. The Church of England, however, refused to allow women in the ministry. When she was invited to preach at the City Temple on March 18, 1917, a notable Nonconformist church in London, she accepted. After she had spoken at the City Temple on several more occasions to large congregations, the church offered her and Royden took the post of pulpit assistant in the summer of 1917. In March 1920, she resigned from the City Temple to found the interdenominational Fellowship Guild with an old friend, Percy Dearmer. They maintained that the Guild was not a new church but a religious center that was still part of the Church of England. Within a few months, they moved into permanent quarters and were soon attracting large numbers of people, many of them young women and men. Royden had regular preaching duties at the Guild, but she frequently went off on preaching crusades all over the world. She enjoyed enormous success in the United States and spoke to packed houses wherever she went, although some women’s religious societies were scandalized to learn that she smoked. Royden met the Reverend Hudson Shaw in Oxford in 1901, and in her words, “We loved each other at sight.”28 Unfortunately, Shaw was married to a mentally unstable woman who utterly depended on him; he could not leave her. Although he and Maude Royden formed a loving, supportive relationship that was sanctioned by his wife, it was not a physical one, a denial painful for them both. When Hudson Shaw’s wife died in 1944, they married, but Shaw was already desperately ill and died two months later.

Writers Writing, like education, scholarship, and philanthropy, was an acceptable endeavor for women at the turn of the century, and there were no prohibitions to taking up one’s pen. Oxford women had already produced an impressive number of scholarly works since 1879, but now they began stepping outside strictly academic circles to make contributions. Christopher St. John (Somerville 1890) did not confine her writing to one genre but turned out plays, novels, biographies, music and drama criticism, and literary reviews. Born Christabel Marshall, she renamed herself

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when she converted to Catholicism, choosing to be called after St. John the Baptist, who had special significance for her. Adopting a masculine name was not the only way Christopher flouted convention. An openly avowed lesbian, she shared her life with Edith Craig, a theater director and costumier who was the daughter of actress Ellen Terry. They lived together from 1899 until Craig’s death in 1947 but were joined in 1916 by the painter Claire Atwood. George Bernard Shaw urged Christopher to write about this unique ménage à trois, but she never accepted the challenge. When Christopher died in 1960, actress Dame Sybil Thorndike wrote in the Times that Christopher’s critical reviews spurred her to improve her performances and added: “She was too much an individual in her life and work to be one of the most popular, but we who loved her will miss this lively, extreme, and forceful personality.”29 Oxford has turned out a remarkable number of women novelists over the years, a trend that began early. D. K. Broster (St. Hilda’s 1896) enjoyed popularity as a historical novelist and collaborated with fellow student Gertrude Winifred Taylor (St. Hilda’s 1899) in producing both fiction and nonfiction works. Their joint novel The Vision Splendid (1913), set in Oxford, was one of their most famous. Winifred Peck (LMH 1901) also became a novelist of note, but of the early women students, Rose Macaulay established the most outstanding literary reputation. Macaulay went to Somerville in 1900, among the first in a long line of Somervillians who turned to novel writing. In 1906, she published Abbots Verney, her first novel, and over the next fifty years wrote twenty-two more, several of which won literary prizes. Written “in a vein of detached amusement at the follies of the human race,” her books found great favor with the reading public.30 Macaulay also produced literary criticism, essays, travel books, journal articles, and poetry, many of which received critical acclaim. A respected member of London’s literary world, she received an honorary LittD from Cambridge in 1951 and was appointed DBE shortly before her death in 1958.

Other Firsts In the student registers from the Oxford women’s colleges (excepting St. Hugh’s, which does not publish a register) and other college accounts for the period between 1890 and 1910, a few individuals stand out for choosing careers in which women were rare. Constance Todd Coltman (Somerville 1908) became the first woman ordained to the Christian ministry in Britain. In 1917, she and her fiancé became Congregational ministers in an ordination service attended by Maude Royden. (Nonconformists were more amenable than Anglicans to seeing women in their pulpits; the Church of England did not ordain women until 1994.) The civil service slowly began incorporating women into its ranks, and Dorothy Hammonds (St. Hugh’s 1904) was the first



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woman named a Divisional Inspector of Schools. Mary Pickford (LMH 1903) was one of a handful of women serving in Parliament. She had accumulated considerable governmental experience before her election in 1931, and her political future seemed bright when she died suddenly of pneumonia in 1934, aged fifty. Hilda Matheson, a Home-Student between 1908 and 1911, joined the fledgling British Broadcasting Company in 1926, headed the Talks Department from 1927 to 1932, and was particularly influential in using radio as a new form of social communication. Home-Student Violet Butler (1903), daughter of a prominent Oxford family, is credited with pioneering in the field of social work training and social policy research. Butler joined the staff of Barnett House, Oxford’s center of social and economics studies, when it opened in 1914. Training programs for social workers were in an embryonic stage, but she and her colleagues made Barnett House a respected center for such work and eventually got university approval to introduce in 1936 a diploma in public and social administration. In combination with this work, Butler served as tutor in economics to Home-Students, joining her sister Ruth, who was for many years an invaluable component of the Home-Student staff. Doris Odlum (St. Hilda’s 1909), a pioneering psychiatrist, was particularly noted for her work with mental illness in children. She authored several books on mental health, became a fellow of the British Medical Association in 1958, actively participated in medical associations worldwide, and was named a foundation fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1971. Women educated at Oxford became increasingly visible in turn-of-thecentury Britain. Secondary schools, colleges, and universities could point to a number of former students on their payrolls. Others achieved recognition through social activism or literature, while a few had the distinction of being among the first women to enter professions traditionally closed to them. Referring to increased employment options for women, one writer has commented that women’s achievements in all these fields went far toward blotting out the Victorian picture of the ideal lady as a clinging vine, and toward proving feminist claims that women both could be and should be successful and valuable participants in the work to be done in the world.31 The New Woman’s sphere of action remained limited, but she was making the most of the opportunities available to her. To many, it seemed inevitable that, as more educated women entered mainstream British life, more barriers to their social and political equality would fall.

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9 New Principals, New Premises

S

omerville was forced to look for a new principal after Agnes Maitland’s death in 1906, and the council unanimously voted to offer the position to Emily Penrose, a Somerville student between 1889 and 1892. When she accepted the principalship, she became the first former student, but by no means the last, to return as head of an Oxford women’s college. Somerville made a fortunate choice, for few could have been as well suited to lead women students into the twentieth century as Emily Penrose. Blessed with intellect and vision, she was the first Oxford woman principal “to combine high administrative ability with academic achievement.”1

Emily Penrose at Somerville When Miss Penrose took up her post at Somerville in the spring of 1907, raising academic standards became one of her top priorities. Although eight Somervillians had recently earned first-class honours in final examinations, an unprecedented achievement for Oxford women, Emily Penrose made it clear that all Somerville students were to get on a degree track and abide by the same regulations regarding residence and preliminary examinations as undergraduates. She believed that the strongest argument for allowing women degrees would be the number of women who qualified for them, and she refused to admit students who were not prepared to take the full degree course. This far-sighted perspective, at a time when degree prospects for women did not look promising, paid off. When women were granted the opportunity to take degrees in 1920, Somervillians from Miss Penrose’s era became immediately eligible, while many women from other colleges could not claim their BAs until they passed the preliminary examinations they had been allowed to skip. In a further effort to accept only women able to fulfill Somerville’s expectations of them, the college instituted its own entrance examination in 1908, the first of the women’s colleges to do so. In 1907, the first rule for admission to Somerville stated: “Every applicant must satisfy the Principal . . . that she is qualified to profit by the course of study at Oxford.”2 By 130



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1908, that sentence had been changed to read: “Every applicant must pass the college Entrance Examination before admission.”3 Students were also required to pass responsions or some equivalent examination before taking up their college residence. Miss Penrose’s intelligence and administrative ability impressed everyone who worked with her. In a history of Somerville, Pauline ­Adams wrote that the new principal’s skills made it difficult for anyone to argue convincingly “either for the intellectual inferiority of women, or for their unfitness for university business.”4 Her leadership skills did not, however, always translate to a personal level. Excessively shy, she often seemed brusque and aloof, and she had no gift for small talk. Moreover, she was physically imposing—almost six feet tall—and frequently presented a stern and unyielding exterior. Many people were too intimidated to try to break through her reserve, but those who dared discovered, by their own accounts, a generous and sympathetic character. Building on Miss Maitland’s work, Emily Penrose further strengthened Somerville’s tutorial staff and lured two women to Oxford who had been tutors at Royal Holloway College: Helen Darbishire in English and Margaret Hayes Robinson in history. Miss Darbishire (Somerville 1900) made a name for herself as a scholar of Milton and Wordsworth and eventually succeeded Margery Fry as principal of Somerville in 1931. Miss Hayes Robinson, who gained a first in modern history at St. Hilda’s in 1898, had been extremely popular at Royal Holloway, and she impressed the young Vera Brittain when the latter entered Somerville in 1914. Women dons had already earned a sometimes well-deserved reputation for dowdiness, but Vera viewed Miss Hayes Robinson as feminine and attractive—“To see her is to feel that a don’s life need not be a narrow routine and therefore a thing to dread.”5 Miss Penrose also worked to raise the status of tutors within the college, a process that finally resulted in their admission to membership of the Somerville Council in 1921—a further step toward self-governance. Additionally, the new principal presided over a major transformation in Somerville’s appearance and tradition. Up to 1913, the college consisted of a scattered collection of buildings, with the new library providing the only linkage. Students were housed in two halls, each with its own dining and drawing room, separate accommodations that probably did promote the family-style atmosphere so prized by some of the earlier founders. There were drawbacks, however. A certain amount of rivalry existed between the two communities, and students from one group often seemed like strangers to those from the other, despite official attempts to bring them together. Wanting to do away with this system, Margery Fry and six supporters drafted a letter to the council in 1910. They pointed out the need for a central hall large enough to accommodate the entire college for meals, lectures, and special occasions and for additional accommodation for

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students and staff. Miss Fry and her colleagues also suggested a way to finance their proposal. They would make the traditional plea for donations from old students and friends, but realizing that many Somervillians would be financially unable to part with large sums of money, they suggested an additional option: that the college issue debenture shares at 3.5 percent, which would be gradually redeemed. Council agreed to the plan, and appeal letters were sent out. From outright donations, Somerville received about six thousand pounds, but the debenture alternative was clearly attractive. Former students responded so generously to this scheme that eleven thousand pounds was raised, enough to insure that construction would proceed. When building was completed by the fall of 1913, Somerville possessed a central dining hall with new kitchen facilities and a senior common room and a residential block that provided more than twenty additional rooms. 6 With the new addition, christened Maitland Hall in honor of the late principal, Somerville presented a unified and dignified aspect to the world, one in keeping with an institution determined to be worthy of the status of an Oxford college. Somervillians were justly proud that their financial contributions had made the new hall possible. H.A.L. Fisher, president of the council and warden of New College, paid tribute to their achievement when Maitland Hall was officially opened on October 4, 1913: If any doubt should exist in any mind as to whether a women’s college in Oxford is capable of evoking the same feelings of affection in its members as are evoked in the case of generations of old Oxford men for the foundations to which they are attached, this building supplies a sufficient answer.7 Professor Gilbert Murray, a member of Somerville’s council, also spoke at the opening but struck a more somber note. He challenged those present not to lose sight of “some human element of personal devotion and the sense of high adventure” that characterized those who had fought to give women access to higher education. Now that women could consider an Oxford education almost a birthright, would they still give to Somerville their unswerving loyalty and allegiance? As the authors of Somerville College 1879–1921 pointed out, the warning came too late. By 1913, the college had had time to become self-conscious and to ask what it was making of the opportunities of the present. . . . If Miss Maitland led enthusiasts, Miss Penrose had the far more difficult task of governing a community critical of the position that had been won, a task which required the rare power and the impartiality which have marked her rule.8



New Principals, New Premises

However painful to an older generation, this change was inevitable. Students could not remain in thrall to the past forever. They had to work out the value of their heritage for themselves, a process totally in keeping with Somerville’s reputation for independent thinking. Still, October 4 was a day to celebrate. All Somervillians present, regardless of which generation they belonged to, could unite in pride at how far their college had come since 1879. A more poignant celebration occurred on June 22, 1914, when Somerville hosted a dance in Maitland Hall. Ninety couples danced the night away and gathered for a group photograph at dawn, the women in long dresses and the men in evening clothes. As Pauline Adams starkly pointed out, many of those young men would not be alive in five years.9

Elizabeth Wordsworth’s Legacy In 1909, Elizabeth Wordsworth retired as principal of LMH, ending a remarkable thirty-year tenure in which she indelibly stamped her unique character on the hall she represented. She had physically withdrawn from the college in 1900 when she moved into a residence next to LMH that was bequeathed to her for her private use. Although she still attended chapel in college and dined once a week in either Old Hall or Wordsworth Building, she was a shadowy presence to some of the younger students, without much influence over their lives. As the college grew, she could no longer know all the students individually and regretted that loss of intimacy, even though she was proud that LMH flourished. She was heard to remark: “I am rather like an old piece of blotting paper; I cannot absorb so many new students.”10 Miss Wordsworth had always been haphazard in the performance of routine administrative duties, but as she got older, she became even more casual about keeping track of important papers and checks, to the embarrassment and chagrin of her assistants. She could not be relied on to attend committee or council meetings. She would either try to avoid them altogether or simply get up and walk out if the proceedings bored her. When she wrote to her niece in 1906 about how “committees embitter the afternoons,” she no doubt realized that college affairs were not of paramount interest to her anymore.11 Still, people could hardly imagine LMH without her, and when she officially retired, tributes flowed in, all expressing gratitude and affection. Janet Courtney tried to explain Elizabeth Wordsworth’s legacy: What that thirty years meant to the Hall and to the general position of women in Oxford, it would be difficult to over-state. It meant broad culture, it meant the spirit of leisure, it meant reverence for tradition

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yet refusal to get into ruts. It meant personal interest and individual affection, inspiration, a spur to the sluggish and a check on the overstrenuous. Above all, it meant the shrewd comments of experience and the salutary refusal to take youth too seriously.12 In choosing a successor, LMH did not stray from the “proper lady” tradition and appointed a woman with a similar background to Miss Wordsworth’s. Henrietta Jex-Blake, daughter of the dean of Wells Cathedral and former headmaster of Rugby, had been educated at home. The resemblance ended there, however, for she possessed nothing of her predecessor’s outgoing personality and ready wit. Painfully shy, Miss Jex-Blake found it difficult to converse easily with people and often came across as curt and distant. In that respect, she sounds like Emily Penrose, but she had no outstanding administrative and intellectual talents to offset her personal liabilities. When she died in 1953, her obituary notice in the Times was interesting in its plain and unadorned account of her life. Many obituaries go overboard in enumerating the deceased’s praiseworthy qualities, and Elizabeth Wordsworth once impatiently exclaimed over a particularly fulsome notice: “They could not have said more if she had been the Virgin Mary.”13 One cannot help speculating that Miss Jex-Blake did not inspire an excess of affection. In her favor, however, she had a cool elegance that many people found attractive, and she was a hard worker, as would become evident during the trying war years and influenza epidemic that followed. It would have been difficult, of course, for anyone to replace the legendary Miss Wordsworth, but Henrietta Jex-Blake seems a particularly strange choice, given the pool of capable, educated women who were now available. (Both Eleanor Jourdain and Margaret Hayes Robinson had applied for the post.) Like Somerville, LMH changed its appearance during the early 1900s. Wordsworth Building, completed in 1896, represented the first stage of a grander building scheme that was to include a large central block and another wing of students’ rooms. Lack of money prevented additional construction at that time, but the pressure for more space grew increasingly desperate. As one of her last acts as principal, Miss Wordsworth initiated this next phase of building although she stepped down before its completion. Her council was not convinced that the college’s bank balance could permit such expenditure, but she breezily ignored their doubts and insisted that building begin. Three council members resigned in protest in 1908, including the treasurer, who feared that the hall was “courting possible (not certain) disaster” and jeopardizing its financial credibility.14 Despite objections and concerns, construction was in progress by the spring of 1909. The new block, called Talbot, opened in 1910 and consisted of kitchens, dining hall, library, and accommodation for the principal (Miss Jex-Blake,



New Principals, New Premises

not Miss Wordsworth, occupied these new rooms). Lord Curzon, former viceroy of India and now Oxford’s chancellor, presided over the opening, and the occasion marked the first time that the head of the university, at either Oxford or Cambridge, had visited a women’s college in an official capacity. Curzon remarked that the union between the university and women “had been blest” and that “the sound of Oxford must go out into all lands and women as well as men must bear the message.” He reminded his listeners, however, never to forget “that the highest ideal and conception of womanhood” was to be found in the home.15 In 1915, Toynbee Building, the final wing of the original architectural plan, was finished, which added more student rooms and a large junior common room. The financial strain throughout these expansion projects had been considerable, but gifts from friends and old students largely financed the central block, while the debenture scheme that had been so successful at Somerville helped pay for Toynbee. Despite budget worries, few would deny that the new buildings added greatly to Lady Margaret Hall’s comfort and dignity.

The Growth of St. Hilda’s At the turn of the century, St. Hilda’s appeared to be thriving, and the resident student population rose to twenty-five, the largest number ever accommodated in the hall. Increased numbers meant increased revenue, but Miss Beale felt that St. Hilda’s needed a more secure financial foundation than one based on her own money and began exploring other financial options. What she came up with in 1900 was an amalgamation of the hall with St. Hilda’s College, Cheltenham—a financially prosperous teachertraining institution that she had also founded. All the land and buildings in Oxford would be turned over to this joint venture in return for access to the resources of the Cheltenham college. Both colleges would operate under the title of St. Hilda’s Incorporated College, but each would use its existing name for educational purposes. St. Hilda’s, Oxford, retained its council (as a subcommittee of the incorporated college), which exercised control over local educational matters.16 The timing of the merger could not have been better. Student numbers dropped again at the hall after 1901, creating financial hardships, and the college would have been on shaky ground indeed if the assets of the incorporated college had not been available. In 1906, Miss Beale, the woman on whom St. Hilda’s had so largely depended, died at the age of seventy-five. A strong-minded individual who liked to have her own way, she and Mrs. Burrows had not always enjoyed a harmonious relationship; yet without Miss Beale’s guidance and financial backing, St. Hilda’s probably would not have survived its precarious start in the nineteenth century. Her foresight in placing St. Hilda’s on a sounder financial footing before she died ensured the hall’s survival into the twentieth. In her will, Miss Beale be-

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queathed to the incorporated college one thousand pounds, of which St. Hilda’s Hall received half, along with the furniture and pictures she had originally given to the hall on loan. The seesaw of student numbers took an upward swing around 1904, and St. Hilda’s was feeling flush enough in 1908 to expand. A new wing added thirteen more student rooms, an oak-paneled library, and various rooms for staff and servants. The addition was largely financed by St. Hilda’s share of Miss Beale’s final bequest, together with the generous loan of its half of the bequest from the Cheltenham St. Hilda’s. As in the other women’s societies, old students of St. Hilda’s felt the need to maintain links with their college, and in 1905, they formed the Old Students’ Association. The association also began publishing the Chronicle, a yearly report that kept members informed about life in the hall, past and present. It was not long before OSA members wanted some share in the management of the hall and requested a seat on the council. When their wish was eventually granted, Margaret Hayes Robinson became the first former student to sit as a member of council. Legal difficulties under the constitution of the incorporated college prevented an increase in old student representation until 1914, when the hall gained more independence and more power to manage its own affairs. Under the new rules, “qualified members” of the hall could now be elected to the council—qualified members being defined as OSA representatives who fulfilled certain conditions, academic and administrative staff of the hall, and any honorary members appointed by the council. Though the influence of old students was not at first significant, the OSA created a link among generations of students, enabling them to unite for the best interests of their college. In 1910, Mrs. Burrows retired, to be succeeded by her daughter Christine. Mrs. Burrows’s tenure at St. Hilda’s had not always been easy, as she coped with Miss Beale’s demands and interference, the hall’s often perilous finances, and the task of making St. Hilda’s acceptable to a sometimes skeptical Oxford.17 Through the hall’s early difficult period, Mrs. Burrows was a gracious presence who endeavored to create an atmosphere of homelike comfort and refinement. She expected her charges to behave like well-brought-up young ladies and fussed over their appearance, always encouraging them to “make use of the shop windows as you walk down the High to lectures.”18 She often acted more like the lady of the house than the principal, a style that was beginning to seem out of date by the 1900s, but her calm and dignified demeanor had served the hall well when it struggled to take its place as a recognized women’s society in Oxford. Christine Burrows seemed the logical next choice to head St. Hilda’s. She had worked hand in glove with her mother, to whom she was devoted, in running the hall as soon as she completed her final honour school in history in 1894. Since 1896, she had been vice-principal and history tutor but had also shared in the more mundane tasks of supervising the household



New Principals, New Premises

and chaperoning students. As principal, Miss Burrows tried to preserve the family atmosphere cultivated by her mother, but she was more in touch with the spirit of the times. For one thing, she was deeply interested in, and very much in favor of, the suffrage movement in Britain and participated in a historic march of women suffragists in London in 1908. For another, Miss Burrows knew how to direct her students educationally, having been an Oxford student and later a tutor. It is said that she probably would have achieved a first instead of a second on her finals if her St. Hilda’s duties had not already begun to interfere with her studies. After guiding the hall through a period of steady growth, Christine Burrows retired in 1919 to care for her mother, who maintained a residence in Oxford.

Changes at St. Hugh’s Miss Moberly, another embodiment of the upper-class Victorian lady, still presided at St. Hugh’s when the new century began. Joan Evans, who would gain distinction as an antiquarian and art historian, came as a student in 1914, and although she recognized that the college had needed such a model of respectability in its early days, she found Miss Moberly out of date. Joan complained that the principal had “an amazing insularity; a refusal to acknowledge the existence of any point of view that was not Anglican; and a cherishing of an idea of womanhood directly derived from Charlotte M. Yonge”— a Victorian writer whose edifying novels espoused the virtues of high Anglicanism, and Miss Moberly’s godmother. Anne Moberly had never seemed a natural fit for the principal’s job; she was ill at ease in social situations and, having been raised in a well-to-do home with an army of servants, had little or no idea about how to run a household. Completely indifferent to beauty or personal comfort, she never attempted to improve St. Hugh’s shabby furnishings or poorly prepared food. Twenty-eight years after the college was founded, Joan Evans found a St. Hugh’s that would have been familiar to earlier students: Our rooms were deplorably furnished, and our food ordered without intelligence and cooked without care or supervision. . . . Never in my life have I eaten so much reasty [rancid] ham and over-salt beef, more wooden carrots and more tasteless milk puddings . . . and there was a mysterious sweet that appeared on Sunday evenings, apparently made from the remains of other puddings stuck together with custard, that the whole college knew as the Ancient of Days.19 Yet St. Hugh’s owed a great deal to Miss Moberly. There would probably have been no college without her perseverance, and Annie Rogers, who did not dispense praise lightly, maintained that her achievement was “the most remarkable in the history of women’s education.”20 It was perhaps

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fitting that before Miss Moberly stepped down (she resigned in 1915), she oversaw changes at St. Hugh’s that were significant in its history. In 1911, St. Hugh’s registered as a company under the Companies Act of 1908 and changed its name to St. Hugh’s College. The Trust was dissolved, and St. Hugh’s became a nonprofit corporate body, with its composition defined as members of council, former students who had resided for at least two years and taken a final examination, and tutors who were not old students. The principal, vice-principal, and treasurer would be ex officio members of council, together with some members elected by the college and some by council members themselves. This method of election meant that former students were given a considerable amount of power in determining who sat on the council. Unfortunately, it also meant that tutors would have less influence in their college government. The Board of Trade, which oversaw St. Hugh’s incorporation, ruled that tutors could not be ex officio members of council if they received fees from the AEW, which almost all of them did. The college could elect tutors to council membership, but they would have no official standing as tutors and would serve for only a limited amount of time. In 1910 (just before incorporation), five of St. Hugh’s seven tutors were members of council, and although the number stayed the same for a few years after 1911, that figure began to decline. St. Hugh’s might now be called a college, but with little tutorial representation on the council, it needed more constitutional reform.21 St. Hugh’s certainly did not look like a college in 1911, with students lodged in four separate houses in the Norham Gardens area, not far from Lady Margaret Hall. Miss Moberly had long wished for permanent collegiate buildings complete with gardens, and her wish began to materialize in 1912. In November of that year, the council’s treasurer proposed that the college buy the leasehold of a piece of property in north Oxford at the corner of Banbury Road and St. Margaret’s Road, demolish the existing house, and build to suit its needs. The site was a desirable one, but how could the college pay for it, given its chronically poor financial state? Miss Moberly turned to generous relatives and friends such as Clara Mordan for help. Clara Mordan’s interest in St. Hugh’s had not waned since her initial visit in 1897, and she and Miss Moberly remained close friends. She shared the principal’s desire for St. Hugh’s to look like a proper college and had promised a substantial sum of money for new buildings when the college found suitable premises. Unfortunately, Miss Mordan became seriously ill with tuberculosis in 1911 and, through necessity, curtailed her involvement with St. Hugh’s. She managed to write to Miss Moberly in December 1912 that she was leaving money to the college in her will, but she did not specify how much. When Miss Moberly requested an advance from this legacy, she never got a reply, presumably because Miss Mordan was too sick to respond. Nevertheless, the council decided to proceed with nego-



New Principals, New Premises

tiations to buy the leasehold and begin building without any definite idea about the size of Miss Mordan’s bequest or when it would be forthcoming. At this point, bank loans and donations from friends and supporters kept the dream alive. The college completed all business related to securing the property by June 1914, and work was slated to begin, with completion targeted for the fall of 1915. The outbreak of war made it impossible, however, to keep to a strict schedule, and money became even tighter. Council members feared that they would be forced to severely scale down their original building plans or halt construction altogether. But in early 1915, Miss Mordan died. Although her bequest was reduced because of wartime stringencies, the ten thousand pounds that came to St. Hugh’s meant that work could continue in full, and the project was finally completed in October 1916.22 St. Hugh’s possessed buildings of distinction, and members could proudly show off their chapel, the Mordan Library, the hall, and common rooms. The grounds were particularly promising and became the special preserve of Annie Rogers, who revealed a true genius for gardening. She devoted many hours to landscaping and could often be seen patrolling her domain in a battered old hat and shabby overcoat. If the stories are correct, she was also not above appropriating plants that took her fancy from other gardens. Her great-niece reported a family legend that gardeners at St. John’s College were urged to keep a sharp eye on Miss Rogers if she walked around their premises carrying a large, furled umbrella, handy as both a digging tool and a carryall for smuggling out acquisitions. If she appeared with no umbrella in hand, the gardeners could relax their vigilance and go about their own business.23 Nevertheless, under her “enlightened despotism,” St. Hugh’s gardens became some of the most beautiful in Oxford and a source of pride and pleasure to all members of the college.24 Miss Moberly, who had waited more than twenty-five years to see her dream for St. Hugh’s become a reality, never lived in the new college. On November 17, 1914, she wrote to Archdeacon Houblon, president of the council, expressing her desire to step down and leave St. Hugh’s in “younger and more vigorous hands”; she was sixty-eight years old.25 In her mind, however, only one pair of hands would be capable of directing the affairs of the college—Eleanor Jourdain’s. Since 1903, when Miss Jourdain left her private school to become vice-principal and French tutor at St. Hugh’s, she and Miss Moberly had formed a close personal and professional partnership. They complemented each other well. Where Miss Moberly was shy and introverted, Miss Jourdain was sociable and outgoing, and the older woman had come increasingly to rely on her junior for support and advice. But more than their friendship and involvement with St. Hugh’s bound the two women, for they had shared—and written about—what they called “an adventure,” an experience that brought them more notoriety than either bargained for.

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A Versailles Adventure Before Miss Jourdain accepted a position at St. Hugh’s, she and Miss Moberly traveled together to France in 1901, in part to find out how well they got on. While visiting Versailles on August 10, they got lost on a walk to the Petit Trianon, Marie-Antoinette’s favorite residence, and wandered the grounds, trying to find their bearings. During their wanderings, they saw and spoke with various people along the paths, but each woman began to sense an eerie and unnatural atmosphere. Each experienced a dreamlike heaviness and feeling of oppression, although neither spoke about it at the time. When they finally came into the gardens of the chateau, Miss Moberly saw a woman sketching, dressed in what she later described as old-fashioned clothes. They kept walking toward the house and, as they entered the front entrance hall, joined a guided tour. Their oppressive sensations then vanished, and they began to feel more normal. They returned to Paris by an evening train but did not talk about their afternoon at Versailles for almost a week. When they finally shared their impressions, both concluded that the Petit Trianon was haunted. In November, as Miss Jourdain was visiting Miss Moberly in Oxford, they decided to write separate accounts of what they had seen and heard in order to compare similarities and discrepancies. Shortly afterward, Miss Jourdain, who was still at her private school in Watford, gave lessons on the French Revolution and remembered that August 10 was historically significant—the date in 1792 that rebels sacked the Tuileries, where the king and his family had sought shelter, and massacred the Swiss Guard. She relayed this information to Miss Moberly and suggested that the sketching lady might have been Marie-Antoinette. Miss Moberly concurred, and both became convinced that they had “inadvertently entered within an act of the Queen’s memory,” when, during a time of great fear and distress, “she had gone back in such vivid memory to other Augusts spent at ­Trianon that some impress of it was imparted to the place.”26 Over the next nine years, the two women researched the period in question and consulted maps and plans of the Petit Trianon and its surroundings. Believing the material they collected supported a supernatural explanation (both claimed to have psychic powers), they wrote up their story and published it in 1911 under the pseudonyms of Miss Morison and Miss Lamont as An Adventure. The book created quite a stir, and the public eagerly snapped it up. To the dismay of both authors, however, their account did not meet with universal acceptance. They were particularly upset by a dismissive review that appeared in 1911 in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, written by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, principal of Newnham College from 1892 to 1910. She concluded that the authors “produced a very readable book” but that “the foundations on which the supernormal claims . . .



New Principals, New Premises

are built are too slight, and too little allowance is made for the weakness of human memory both in adding to and subtracting from facts.”27 The Society, which attempted to investigate psychical phenomena in a scientific manner, believed the evidence did not warrant any further attention on its part. Over the years after the first publication (there were five editions in all), other researchers looked at the case, and, although maintaining that they were reluctant to impugn the integrity of two respectable women, they could find no supernatural explanations for what Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain experienced. W. H. Salter, longtime member of the Society for Psychical Research and noted critic of An Adventure, also tried not to be too harsh on the two women, but he strongly suspected that they had embellished their 1901 accounts to make their story more convincing. Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain said they had written two separate accounts each of the French episode, with the second versions offering a fuller description of events, but Salter believes the second manuscripts were written much later—after their historical research.28 In 1957, long after the deaths of Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain, Lucille Iremonger, herself a St. Hugh’s student in the 1930s, wrote an exhaustive account of the whole affair. In her entertaining book The Ghosts of Versailles, she laid out the adventure and its aftermath in great detail and came to a damning conclusion: These famous researches are riddled with loopholes and rife with illogi­ calities, non sequitur reasonings and red herrings. . . . After analysing them it would only be the most determinedly blind of devotees who could persuade himself that his confidence in the genuineness of the experience at Versailles was strengthened by such schoolgirlish naivetes. Although Iremonger left the door open as to whether an experience out of time might be possible, she left no doubt about what she thought of An Adventure. She also made no secret of the fact that she disliked and distrusted Eleanor Jourdain, repeating college gossip that she was “a sneak and a spy, with uncanny powers to boot.”29 She was kinder toward Miss Moberly but believed both women fully capable of manipulating evidence to suit their needs. Her heavy-handed treatment angered friends and supporters of Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain, although most of those who had been intimately involved with the two women and in the controversy itself were now dead. Shortly before her death, Joan Evans raised the story of the ghostly adventure again in a 1976 article entitled “An End to An Adventure.” As a student and later fellow of St. Hugh’s, she had always been loyal to Miss Jourdain and believed she now possessed new evidence that offered a rational explanation for what the two women experienced in 1901. Evans brought forth the name of Robert de Montesquiou, a French aristocrat

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who lived in Versailles at the turn of the century, and explained that he was very fond of recreating the past, often staging tableaux vivants and fancy-dress parties. She speculated that Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain stumbled upon a rehearsal for one of his tableaus and made an honest mistake, given their imaginative natures, in confusing it with something supernatural. “By temperament and training they were both essentially credulous, and would always prefer a picturesque and romantic explanation to one that was capable of scientific proof.”30 This explanation does not, however, lay the mystery to rest. Miss ­Evans based her theory on a 1965 biography of de Montesquiou in which the author, Philippe Jullian, mused on the possibility that the Frenchman and his friends had entertained themselves in fancy dress near the Trianon on the date in question. He did not present this thought as a certainty; he only suggested that they might have been there because they had dressed in costume in the park on other occasions. Yet Miss Evans seized on his conjecture as proof. Jullian goes on to suggest that the strange encounter had “stirred the imaginations of the two Englishwomen and induced hallucinations,” but Evans neglected to respond to that possibility. 31 Why had Robert de Montesquiou’s name never cropped up before? It was a familiar one in Versailles. Miss Jourdain claimed that she investigated whether any costume parties or masquerades were held on the chateau grounds on August 10, 1901, and had received negative replies. In her zeal to restore the honor of Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain, Joan Evans seems to have indulged in flights of fancy herself, and her article does nothing to appease skeptics and critics.

Back in Oxford Surprisingly, the episode had little impact on the Oxford lives of Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain and did not appear to affect their positions at St. Hugh’s. Most people knew they had written An Adventure but may have chosen discreetly to ignore seemingly aberrant behavior on the part of two reputable women. When Miss Moberly retired, it was almost a foregone conclusion that Miss Jourdain would move into the principalship. In fact, St. Hugh’s did not even advertise the post; instead, a committee was formed to recommend names to the council as possible successors. To no one’s surprise, the council appointed Eleanor Jourdain, who assumed office in January 1915. She would probably have been a strong contender for the job even without Miss Moberly’s enthusiastic backing. Miss Jourdain was both an academic, achieving a doctorate from the University of Paris, and a professional educator, having founded and run a successful private school. She had also demonstrated excellent administrative skills, and she clearly wanted the best for St. Hugh’s. Ironically, one of her first acts as principal eventually led to misery for



New Principals, New Premises

her and her college. On taking office, she persuaded the council to appoint Cecilia Ady as vice-principal, a choice that at first seemed a good one. Miss Ady had earned a first in modern history in 1903 while a student at St. Hugh’s and was now a respected scholar of the Italian Renaissance. Returning to her college as history tutor in 1909, she quickly made a name for herself as a brilliant teacher. Miss Ady was also ambitious and strong-willed, as was Miss Jourdain. Looking back on the appointment, one could perhaps guess that friction would be inevitable between two such strong personalities, but in the beginning, they worked well together. Miss Jourdain had her hands full that first year as she prepared for the migration to new quarters, and she needed all her organizational expertise to bring it off. When the great moment arrived, she contracted to have the larger furniture moved by professionals but, to save money, asked the students to transport smaller items. Joan Evans, then a student, described the scene as comical: So the Banbury Road witnessed a constantly renewed procession of young women carrying pictures and cushions and books and tea-sets and such-like treasures in waste-paper baskets and on bicycles, that was vaguely reminiscent of some procession of offerings on an Egyptian tomb.32 Despite her mockery, the young woman was delighted with the new buildings and with Eleanor Jourdain. She saw both as symbols of progress and felt the new principal was the perfect choice to lead St. Hugh’s out of the Victorian age. In fact, Miss Jourdain would eventually lead her college into a serious crisis (see Chapter 14), but for now, students at St. Hugh’s were pleased to be members of a college that seemed to be marching with the times.

Curzon’s Scarlet Letter When George Nathaniel Curzon was installed as the university’s new chancellor in May 1907, the event seemed to promise no special benefit to women at Oxford, for he was politically conservative and an outspoken opponent of votes for women. Nevertheless, his election as chancellor had far-reaching consequences for the status of women students in Oxford. Annie Rogers maintained that “the admission of women to membership in the University was very largely due to Lord Curzon’s action. He did not go very far, but he put the matter on a new footing and he carried weight.”33 At the time Lord Curzon took up his appointment in Oxford, there were increasing demands within the new Liberal government for another royal commission to examine the affairs of Oxford and Cambridge. Some claimed that both universities still ministered to a small and elite popula-

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tion and that neither was fully using its educational resources to benefit both its own students and society as a whole. In an effort to forestall such a commission, Lord Curzon made it known that he intended to encourage Oxford to work on reforms from within, arguing (perhaps naively) that members of the university ought to be better equipped than outsiders to identify problems and promote effective changes. The government agreed to defer a commission for the time being to give the new chancellor a chance to see what he could do. The chancellorship of Oxford had largely been a figurehead position, but Lord Curzon was not cut out for such a role, which was fortunate given the circumstances under which he assumed office. A man of prodigious industry, he wasted no time in grappling with the issue of reform and immediately began soliciting opinions from a wide variety of people connected with the university, trying to hear as many different viewpoints as possible on particular topics. He did not exclude women from his survey and asked Arthur Sidgwick to briefly summarize the reasons for giving women degrees. Sidgwick promptly consulted with Annie Rogers, and the two drafted a reply. After sifting all his accumulated evidence, Lord Curzon presented his paper, “Principles and Methods of University Reform,” to the university on February 12, 1909. Nicknamed “The Scarlet Letter” because of its red binding, the document laid out in great detail his numerous recommendations for change. One of the most unexpected was his proposal to admit women to degrees. He pointed out that every university in England and Scotland, excepting Oxford and Cambridge, now offered degrees to women, and he maintained that the university had already conceded the preliminaries and conditions for degrees, “yielding the reality, while withholding the name.” Lord Curzon also emphasized that, by granting women the right to matriculate and take degrees, Oxford could then exercise control over this growing body of students in its midst (now numbering approximately 250). The chancellor was not, however, prepared to recommend that women become members of Convocation and Congregation or sit on governing bodies of the university. He did not feel degrees should be linked to constitutional privileges, stating that Oxford would never make such a concession anyway (he was proved wrong eleven years later). Lord Curzon was careful to explain that he saw no connection between admitting women to degrees and giving them the vote, the suffrage movement being one to which he was unalterably opposed. Indeed, it seems unnecessary to labour the point that there is all the difference in the world between giving women an opportunity of increasing and improving their natural powers, and granting to them a share in political sovereignty.34



New Principals, New Premises

Lord Curzon’s position on women was puzzling. On the one hand, he had no objection to educating them or to encouraging Oxford to reward their labor and intellect. On the other, he wished to deny them the right to think for themselves and to have a say about how their country should be governed. The ability to hold conflicting views was not, however, unusual for this enigmatic man. According to L.J.L. Dundas, the author of a threevolume biography, “what gave to his [Curzon’s] personality its peculiar interest was its amazing contradictions and perversities. . . . Among his many and diverse activities there was not one in which he was not liable at any moment to astonish and confound by the display of some startling inconsistency.”35 Shortly after Lord Curzon published his paper, the university began prolonged debates on the reforms he proposed and, over the next few years, actually implemented a number of them. Though the chancellor was often frustrated by what he considered a slow rate of progress, he and the university had forestalled a royal commission for the time being. Oxford had won some breathing space to get its affairs in order. With regard to women, the Hebdomadal Council passed a resolution on June 22, 1909: That Council is in favour of bringing before Congregation at an early date the question of admitting women to academic degrees upon the lines laid down in the Chancellor’s memorandum.36 The resolution was vague about a timetable, but Oxford women were pre­pared to be patient, particularly as another movement was afoot to strengthen their tie to the university.

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10 On the Threshold

D

uring the autumn of 1908, H. T. Gerrans, mathematics tu  tor at Worcester and secretary of the Oxford Local Exami  nations, brought forward a proposal concerning Oxford and its women students, independent of the one raised by the chancellor in his memorandum. Long a friend to women in Oxford, Gerrans suggested to the Hebdomadal Council, of which he was a member, that it was now time for the university to undertake the supervision and control of women students. Council agreed to appoint a seven-man committee “to consider the relation of the University to women students in Oxford and women entering for University examinations.”1 Instructed to consult people who were familiar with the present system of educating women in Oxford, the committee sent out a printed list of sixteen questions to the AEW Council and to twenty-nine individuals, including the principals of the five women’s societies, selected tutors, and others associated with women’s education in Oxford. The first question read: “Is it desirable that the University should undertake any responsibility for the supervision of Women Students in Oxford?” The remaining questions asked, for example, whether the supervision should be handled by a delegacy or committee, who should serve on such a body, how its members should be chosen, what its relationship should be to the AEW, and what its responsibility should be for admitting women to examinations. Those who received the questions welcomed the chance to air their views and carefully crafted their replies before sending them on to the committee of Council. The committee then composed an abstract of the responses, using those from the AEW Council as its basis but also noting different opinions. The respondents unanimously answered yes to question 1, and most preferred a delegacy to a committee because the former seemed “to imply a more formal connexion with the University.”2 Although respondents generally agreed on the majority of the items, there was not consensus about such matters as, for example, the composition of the delegacy and how to elect members. Still, the committee felt it had 146



On the Threshold

enough unanimity to work with and drafted thirteen resolutions, which it printed in the fall of 1909. First, the committee was of the opinion that “it is highly desirable that the University should undertake responsibility with regard to Women Students in Oxford” by creating a delegacy that would include the vice­chancellor, proctors, nine members of Convocation (all men), and nine women. The committee also resolved that the university officially recognize the five existing women’s societies. With regard to the delegacy, committee members recommended that it (1) assume control of the Home­Students and appoint a committee for that purpose; (2) take over the duties of the Delegacy of Local Examinations in admitting women to university examinations; (3) keep a register of all women students and admit no unregistered woman to university examinations; and (4) approve any new college or hall for women and have control over any collegiate or noncollegiate lodgings for women. Other resolutions dealt with issuing certificates for registration and examinations, laying down rules for examinations, and defining the delegacy’s relationship to the AEW. The thirteenth resolution recommended drafting a statute that would embody the twelve preceding resolutions. In a footnote to the resolutions, committee members added that they “wish it to be understood that the following resolutions have been passed by them quite independently of the question of granting Degrees to women, on which their opinions are divided.”3 The Hebdomadal Council approved the committee’s recommendations and drafted a statute on March 7, 1910, the preamble to which would be brought before Congregation in May. A correspondent for the Times applauded this action in an article on March 25, 1910, remarking that Congregation was not being asked “to take any new step, but simply to give stability and permanence to what has come into existence, with the concurrence and support of a large number of its members.”4 When Congregation met on May 10, 1910, to vote on the preamble, however, it was clear that not everyone shared the journalist’s point of view. Several men spoke against the statute, but when it came time for a decision, the preamble carried by 159 votes to 28. The statute had to pass through a few more stages before Convocation would rule on its fate in November, and opponents quickly mustered for a fight. One of the main objections to the statute concerned the inclusion of women on the delegacy. Dr. W. W. Johnson, rector of Exeter and a member of the LMH Council, proposed an amendment that would exclude women, arguing that it was dangerous to give nonmembers of the university equal powers as delegates with members. A contributor to the Oxford Magazine complained in a similar vein: The last thing that is needed is to set up a body which can be dominated by a rabid majority of the University members backed by the

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non-members, a state of things which . . . is a possible, indeed a highly probable, contingency. It may not occur, but the University will be singularly ill-advised if it does not safeguard itself against the chance of its occurring.5 Annie Rogers, who was of course in the thick of the fray, had only one comment on the possibility prophesied in this letter: “It was not in the least likely to occur.”6 Supporters of the statute argued that female representation was extremely important because the delegacy would deal exclusively with issues that concerned them. Denying women a voice on it was completely unreasonable. They asked for fairness, and they got it. All amendments were rejected, and the statute passed its final stage in Congregation on June 14, 1910, by a vote of 106 to 53. It would go before Convocation in November. Men were not the only ones who raised objections to the proposed statute. Bertha Johnson, who always seemed resistant to any new development, saw the delegacy as a threat to the AEW, which had always been so special to her. Her concern was no doubt understandable, but she was slow to accept that the growing independence of the women’s colleges had already weakened the association. She had other anxieties about the proposed statute, especially in regard to the status of Home-Students, but supporters, notably Annie Rogers, eventually persuaded her that recognition by the university was too desirable a goal to oppose. Miss Rogers wrote a blunt letter to Mrs. Johnson on August 12, 1910: I hope I shall be able to show you that the Home-Students will have a safer source of income and better friends in the Delegacy than in the AEW. Since the College and tutor factions have been allowed to think they are to run the AEW, this situation has become much more critical. . . . I may be mistaken, but I think some of the little pettinesses of the AEW Council may be less apparent on a University body and that the students who need most help will get it.7 Once convinced of the delegacy’s positive benefits, Mrs. Johnson gave generously of her time, as was typical of her, to help ensure that the elected delegates would work for Oxford women’s best interests.

The Delegacy for Women Students On November 1, 1910, the statute establishing a Delegacy for Women Students passed without opposition in Convocation, and the resolutions recommended by the committee of Council went into effect. From that date,



On the Threshold

women were no longer invisible in the eyes of the university. Oxford officially acknowledged women as a legitimate presence and accepted some responsibility for their control. With regard to examinations, the statute ended a curious situation that had existed for more than twenty years. Since 1884, Oxford had admitted women to examinations, although its statutes plainly stated that only members of the university could be so admitted. As Marjorie Reeves explained: “Women were in the comical position of having to go to the Delegacy of Local Examinations in Merton Street to enter for examinations which technically they were not entitled to take.”8 The subterfuge was over; both the university and women students could now act honestly. The statute also had another interesting result. One of the decrees attached to it retained Bertha Johnson as principal of the Home-Students. She therefore became the first woman to receive an appointment from Oxford University. Annie Rogers mentioned the appointment in Degrees by Degrees, and although she made no comment, she was surely aware of the irony implicit in it. Under the statute, the delegacy assumed the main functions of the AEW, although the latter remained an independent body with its own council for ten more years. The association’s responsibilities were considerably diminished, but it continued to oversee the Nettleship Library, which had been given to all the women’s societies in 1895, to administer benevolent funds, to award prizes, and generally to act as an educational bureau for women in Oxford. The AEW had been supremely important in the history of women’s education in Oxford, and it was not summarily demolished but allowed to die an honorable death. An important feature of the delegacy, around which there had been some controversy, was its composition. For the first time in Oxford’s history, men and women—twenty-one delegates in all—would work together on a university body. Men retained the majority by statute, but nine women could now sit as delegates. The Hebdomadal Council resolved that the principal of the Home-Students (Bertha Johnson at that time) should be a member ex officio and that the vice-chancellor and proctors appoint two other women. An electoral board of women connected with teaching and administration in Oxford would choose the remaining six (two of whom had to be principals). The appointments went to Charlotte Green and Annie Rogers. The electoral board chose Miss Penrose, Miss Moberly, and Miss Burrows (principals); Eleanor Lodge and Lettice Fisher (tutors); and Mrs. R. L. Poole (wife of a fellow of Magdalen and member of the AEW Council). A minor flap occurred when the electoral board did not nominate ­A nnie Rogers but left her to be selected in another way. Miss Rogers and the AEW tutors had in the past had their differences, which no doubt contributed to the snub, but Miss Rogers was hurt. Emily Penrose wrote

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to her on November 20, 1910, to express regret over the incident, saying “that by this silent relegation to the Vice-Chancellor, we have lost an opportunity of showing our gratitude for your long and strenuous services in our cause.”9 It would have been unthinkable for Annie Rogers to be excluded from the delegacy, and in the end, she was not. She did not mention this slight in her book but remarked that, since appointments by the vicechancellor and others of the kind are regularly renewed, “I had no anxiety as to my continued membership of the Delegacy.”10 In other words, she did not have to worry about electoral boards. In 1911, the Delegacy for Women Students set up its headquarters in the basement of the Clarendon Building (the AEW was in the attic), and although Annie Rogers thought the delegacy “absurdly large for its functions,” it was an effective conduit for passing information about women students to the university. She also believed that serving on the delegacy proved to be a valuable experience for both women and men. Women gained firsthand knowledge of how university business was conducted, and men gained firsthand knowledge of what it was like to work with women, finding them “quite capable of understanding University matters.” In a major understatement, Miss Rogers declared that “I myself even acquired some reputation for a knowledge of the Statutes.”11 Despite Bertha Johnson’s earlier apprehensions about the delegacy, the Home-Students benefited from its establishment, as Annie Rogers had predicted. They now had a strong governing committee, officially sanctioned by the university, which actively worked on their behalf. The committee drew up a constitution for the society and assumed some financial responsibility for it. One of its first acts was to grant twenty-five pounds per year for the principal’s administrative costs. Although Mrs. Johnson was grateful for this contribution toward expenses, she still refused to accept a salary for her work, devoutly believing in the value of unpaid service. Recognizing that a future principal might not be financially able or willing to assume office under such an arrangement, the committee had the foresight to set up a trust fund that would ensure a stipend for Mrs. Johnson’s successor. It also obtained money for a scholarship, the first ever provided to Home-Students. To Mrs. Johnson’s delight, an Old Students’ Association was formed in 1911 and promptly enrolled 107 members, a further sign of union and strength. In 1913, the society finally appointed its first four tutors, which was an important step toward collegiate development. Thanks to the delegacy and Mrs. Johnson’s fervent championship, the existence of this unique body of Oxford women students had never seemed so secure. The delegacy may seem a small advance in the campaign for educational equality, but it signaled a definite shift in the university’s attitude. A writer to the Times Women’s Supplement expressed what the delegacy meant to women:



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Oxford has recognized that she has daughters, and some day she will give to them, as to her sons, the right to bear her name and wear her gown.12 Annie Rogers also saw its long-range value: “Though the Delegacy could not be used for direct propaganda for the degree it could be quietly and steadily used to smooth the way for it and to make it appear a natural development and not a revolution.”13

Life in College Under the delegacy, women received an official title—Registered Women Students. A contributor to the 1910 St. Hilda’s Chronicle commented that the title “implies a kind of matriculation and gives women a far more dignified position than they have ever enjoyed.”14 Yet, even though they were now a recognized entity, women students remained on the margins of university life, still largely dependent on themselves for amusement. Within college, they continued to form clubs and societies that catered to the interests of resident students, ranging from the serious to the frivolous. Doro­thy Sayers (Somerville 1912), creator of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, was the impetus behind the Mutual Admiration Society, a group of first-year Somerville students who began meeting weekly in 1912 to share their original compositions with each other. Members had to be elected, and although they were serious about their writing, they had cast off the earnestness that characterized the Associated Prigs, an earlier exclusive Somerville society.15 Women students enthusiastically supported amateur in-college theatricals, and certain types of plays became collegiate institutions. At the end of Trinity term, 1902, Somerville students who had completed final examinations wrote and performed a light-hearted morality play, which was well received. This hastily thrown-together entertainment inaugurated a thirtyyear tradition of the “going-down play,” which evolved into parodies of college life that included songs set to popular tunes of the day. Dorothy Sayers took an active role in her year’s production—Pied Pipings—and “The Song of the Bicycle Secretary” (modeled on a tune from The Mikado) is attributed to her. Sayers had filled the post of bicycle secretary in 1915 and cleverly mocked her reputation for severely enforcing regulations:

It’s well to be methodical where culprits are concerned, So I’ve made a little list, I’ve made a little list Of members of this commonwealth who ought to be interned, And who never would be missed, who never would be missed The brutes who borrow bicycles without the owners’ leave,

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Who get their own in pound and come and ask for a reprieve. Who take their breakfast on the Cher at half past six a.m. And say they thought the general rule did not apply to them, The people with excuses that you really can’t resist, I’m sure they won’t be missed, I’m sure they won’t be missed.

It also became the custom for second-year students at Somerville, St. Hugh’s, and LMH to stage a play, and LMH students used theirs to poke fun at their elders—the third year who were about to go down. Debate groups had long been popular with Oxford women, and one of the first intercollegiate ventures was the Oxford Students’ Debating Society (OSDS), established in 1889. The society had its heyday in the 1890s and early 1900s, but women began to lose their enthusiasm for it in prewar Oxford. Dorothy Horne (LMH 1912) described the OSDS as a “rather chilly” affair and maintained that “it was always a thankless task to have to find speakers . . . and to whip up a respectable contingent to support them.”16 During these years, women found their in-college debating so­ cie­ties more fun and less stuffy. Each college had its Sharp Practice group, whose participants drew lots to see who had to speak extemporaneously for several minutes either for or against a particular topic. Students often addressed weighty subjects on current affairs or government policies but could find themselves discussing whether “it is better to sing out of tune than not at all” or “the idler gets the best out of life.”17 Although Sharp Practice could be a nerve-shattering ordeal, it generated much excitement, and students believed the experience taught them to think quickly on their feet. One of the most influential college debating societies was Somerville’s Parliament, which began in 1884 and was conducted on strict parliamentary lines. Members did not take their responsibilities lightly but debated their subjects with great thoroughness. Pauline Adams noted Parliament’s important role in generating interest in current affairs and promoting “a grasp of parliamentary and constitutional procedure, on which many were to draw in later life.”18 For women who wanted to enter the public arena after college, Parliament was a good training ground. Parliament also became known outside Somerville. In 1912, the Arnold Society of Balliol invited members to a joint debate on the motion, “That this House is resolved that in matters of franchise no distinction should be made between man and woman.” To make the debate more interesting, two speakers from each group were assigned to speak for the proposal and two against. The novelty of a mixed student gathering attracted even the national press, whose members acknowledged that the Somerville contingent handled itself extremely well. The motion carried with eighty-six votes for and twenty-six against. Afterward, the Oxford Magazine commented that a “much higher level of debate . . . would be reached in most



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Oxford Societies if only women could take part.”19 The success of this meeting led to other invitations from Oxford men’s groups, and Somer­ villians were justly proud of Parliament’s reputation. Many Oxford women found an outlet for their energies through tennis and hockey, both played on an intercollegiate and interuniversity level. In 1893, hockey was revived at both LMH and Somerville, where it had been banned for a number of years, and students eagerly took to the field again. All the colleges had their hockey clubs, tapping the best players from each to represent Oxford against Cambridge. In 1912, Oxford won the hockey cup from Cambridge for the first time in fifteen years under the captaincy of Nora Almond, a Home-Student. Because Home-Students had fewer societies and organized activities than the halls and colleges, they were particularly excited by the success of one of their own. The women students who enjoyed hockey remembered an exhilarating sense of freedom racing up and down the field, even though they had to wear long skirts. Hockey skirts were typically worn about six inches off the ground, which meant that they tended to become heavy with mud and to restrict movement. One Somerville student recalled that brushing a skirt took at least twenty minutes, and she was referring only to mud picked up during a day’s ordinary activities, not on the hockey field.20 When Somerville in 1910 introduced red hockey skirts whose length was twelve inches off the ground, it was considered a daring move, particularly by some diehards who thought even the six-inch rise immodest.21 A number of women students adopted boating with great enthusiasm but were required to pass a strenuous swimming test before being allowed on the river. Recreational boating had long been considered acceptable exercise, although the women’s colleges warned their students to stay only on the Cherwell and out of sight of undergraduates, who were more likely to be on the Isis. St. Hilda’s students were particularly keen on boating, probably because the Cherwell flowed right past their doorstep, and they were the first to go beyond the purely recreational and row an eight-oar boat. Doris Odlum (1909), a member of the pioneering crew, remembered that Miss Burrows was anxious because “Oxford eyebrows were raised” but decided to allow it if the women would try to remain on secluded stretches of the river.22 Gladys Ainslie (1910), also a keen rower, complained about the women’s cumbersome clothes: blouses up to the neck and skirts to the ankle. When the St. Hilda’s crew progressed from fixed to sliding seats, the long skirts proved even more of a nuisance. Gladys said that, although they tied elastic bands around their knees, they were often slowed by the cry, “Stop, my skirt has caught.”23 Though chaperonage to lectures had been abandoned, women students were still enjoined not to go about on their own. Emily Penrose and Annie Rogers drew up a document in 1909 that laid out the disciplinary rules for women students at Oxford and compared them to those in force at

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other universities around the country. For example, they noted that male and female students in a number of universities interacted freely in academic settings and, to some extent, in social ones, but they were at pains to point out that Oxford served different students. “A large proportion of the students in other Universities belong to a different class, and many of them are preparing to be teachers in elementary schools. There would be great difficulty in enforcing rules which were in marked contrast with the habits of the students’ own homes.” In justifying the numerous restrictions on women in Oxford, the authors maintained that they were “in correspondence with the traditions of that class of society to which most of the Oxford students belong.”24 As elitist as their remarks sound, Miss Penrose and Miss Rogers were probably correct in their assessments, for very few women students seemed to think they had more freedom at home than at college. Even if students thought some of the rules unnecessary and oldfashioned, they tolerated them, more or less, with good humor. Charis (Barnett) Frankenburg (Somerville 1912) said that women realized they were still on probation in Oxford and circulated a rhyme to that effect:

When I’m in statu pupillari My only Aunt! I must be wary.

The rhyme probably made them feel naughtier than they actually were. Charis went on to say that she and her friends “never felt the slightest inclination to break rules ‘for the hell of it.’ We were completely satisfied with our full and orderly life in incomparable pre-war Oxford.”25 It does seem, however, that many women students of this period, while respecting the rules, reserved the right to use their own common sense in regulating their behavior and not to get into a state if they unwittingly overturned convention. Dorothy Sayers was such a student. Although an exuberant, even brash, young woman, she did not overtly chafe against restrictions but would not make herself miserable if she broke one of them, as shown by an incident in her second year. She and two friends went to the theatre, and through a series of mishaps, she became separated from her companions and ended up sitting beside a male acquaintance. Interestingly, the young man was much more worried than Dorothy about this rules infraction, convinced that she would be severely reprimanded. Dorothy tried to reassure him, but his anxiety remained. Spying the senior student (an elected position at Somerville) nearby, Dorothy scrambled across aisles to inform her of the situation. When she was laughingly assured that there was no cause for alarm, she carried the news back to her relieved companion. The evening ended cheerfully, and the senior student later commented that the young man must be a very nice one if he is bothered by “a small contretemps that most men would take as a spree.”26 Dorothy



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was, of course, in breach of the rules; however, she and the senior student knew it was not her fault and made no great fuss about it. Only rarely does one hear of a major transgression by a woman student, but any embarrassing incidents would have been kept as quiet as possible. In December 1910, Miss Burrows was forced to write to one student’s mother, requesting that she remove her daughter from St. ­Hilda’s. Although Miss Burrows did not specify the particulars of the young woman’s offenses, she mentioned that warnings about unsuitable behavior fell on deaf ears, adding, “I find that her sense of moral responsibility is so slightly developed I have no apparent grounds on which to appeal to her.”27 (Such language to a parent might well result in a lawsuit today.) That so few episodes of this kind appear between 1879 and 1914 is testimony to the characters of the young women who came to Oxford and to the vigilance of those entrusted with their care. This vigilance extended even to control of what Oxford women students wore outside college, as noted in Chapter 3. Ethel Wallace (St. Hugh’s 1908) remembered that her college was so “strict and pernickety in its rules” that “to cross the road from one house to the other, one had to wear a hat and one was kept in the hall for the purpose in case you had forgotten yours.”28 Most students dressed very simply and inconspicuously, but Dorothy Sayers appeared at breakfast one morning wearing a pair of colorful earrings—red and green parrots in gilt cages that hung almost to her shoulders. (Whether she put them on as a joke for her friends or intended to wear them on the streets of Oxford is not reported.) Miss Penrose, reluctant to be heavy-handed or censorious, nevertheless felt compelled to ask an older student to persuade Dorothy to remove them, and her persuasion succeeded. This same student remembered another occasion when her interference was not so effective. Miss Penrose asked her to caution a young women against dressing so boldly, but when she did, the offender cried out, “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t be a Dowd.”29 The upshot of the confrontation is unrecorded. Miss Penrose permitted a good deal of freedom within college, but she did not hesitate to intervene if she thought a student might draw unwelcome attention to herself outside college. She was adamant about the need for decorum when students ventured beyond Somerville’s gates. Flashy dressing was certainly the exception for most women students, but even their conservative attire could provoke comment, particularly when skirts became more form fitting around 1910. In June 1914, Mrs. Johnson relayed to her senior student a protest from some of the men taking schools: We have had a very tiresome complaint that the men examinees are disturbed by the way our students sit in their tight skirts and show

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their legs. We do not know who are at fault, but we are bound to warn all.30 Charis Frankenburg reported that Miss Penrose got a similar letter in 1914 from the warden of Keble. He requested that women students keep their ankles covered during examinations; the undergraduates could not concentrate if they were exposed to bare ankles.31 We can only guess at the results, but some of the women may have been astonished (and possibly flattered) to learn that the men took any notice of them at all. The need for propriety confronted women students at every turn, but they could relax their guard somewhat within their own societies. Their principals even permitted them, to some extent, to make their own rules concerning in-college behavior, a freedom they exercised through college meetings and the election of senior students. Somervillians were often allowed more autonomy than other Oxford women, which only added to their reputation for strong-willed independence. Although smoking was off-limits at the other Oxford colleges and in Cambridge, Somerville students were allowed to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking. After discussion, they saw no reason to prohibit smoking in private but discouraged the practice in public rooms, and Miss Penrose and her staff did not interfere. Despite Somerville’s leniency, smoking was still considered a forward thing for women to do. When Charis Frankenburg ordered a cigarette box carved with the Somerville arms, she remembered, the disapproving clerk insisted on calling it her sweet-box. She boldly told him he could call it what he liked, but it was for cigarettes.32 From its inception, Somerville had stood for intellectual and religious liberty, and the college encouraged a strong spirit of individualism. It comes as a shock, therefore, to discover a student who found there nothing of the kind. Margaret Thomas, daughter of a wealthy coal baron, entered Somerville in 1904, while Miss Maitland still served as principal, and found little to admire: I disliked the ugliness of most of the public rooms, and I disliked the glass and the crockery. . . . I disliked the dowdiness of the dons, and more still that of the other girls. . . . I could not bear the cloisterishness of the place; and felt irritated by the cautious way in which we were shut off from contact with men, the air of forced brightness and virtue that hung about the cocoa-cum-missionary-party-hymn-singing girls.33 She stayed only two terms. After an ill-advised marriage, she became more involved in her father’s business and allied herself with the militant suffragettes. In 1918, her father died and by a special decree bequeathed his



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title and business interests to her. As Viscountess Rhondda, she used her money and power in 1920 to found Time and Tide, a weekly paper devoted to promoting equal rights for women.

Suffrage in Oxford At the time she entered Somerville, Margaret Thomas later admitted, she had “no notion of making any further use of my education when I had got it” and was not sure why she had determined to come to Oxford.34 She knew she was ambitious for something, however, and assumed it must be marriage, especially as she fancied herself already in love. Given these feelings, possibly nothing could have induced her to remain in college. Women’s suffrage, the cause with which Margaret Thomas became intensely involved beginning in 1908, had not yet captured the imagination of Oxford women students. Jane Richmond, who entered St. Hilda’s in 1904, recalled that “Mary Murray found us sadly deficient in interest in the vote” and that “none of us foresaw, hoped for, or dreaded change.”35 Eleanor Rooke (future tutor at St. Hilda’s), who attended LMH between 1905 and 1908, remembered the period as one when women at Oxford slowly did an about-face, from antisuffragists to suffragists.36 For many years, the women’s suffrage campaign had been conducted quietly, attracting little notice from politicians or the press. When the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) was formed in 1897, it became a valuable tool for keeping suffrage issues alive, but its conservative tactics—meetings, petitions, and deputations to Parliament—did not generate much excitement or forward progress. Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters changed this passive scene by founding the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903 and adopting militant strategies to force the government to act. WSPU members were called suffragettes to distinguish them from suffragists, women who sought the vote through peaceful means. Initially, the NUWSS sympathized with the aims of the new group, but when the WSPU escalated its policy of violent protest after 1908, the two organizations became implacably opposed to each other. Some of the first references to suffrage activities among Oxford women concerned two large rallies held in June 1908. The NUWSS staged the initial one and organized a two-mile march through London. Christine Burrows, long a supporter of women’s suffrage, led a contingent from St. Hilda’s in this procession. A week later, when the WSPU held a rally in Hyde Park, Eleanor Jourdain and Edith Wardale, both wearing their doctoral robes, headed a group from St. Hugh’s. Clara Mordan, St. Hugh’s great benefactor, had joined the WSPU in 1906 and was one of the organizers and financial backers of the Hyde Park demonstration, which may help explain St. Hugh’s participation in it.

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Although many women were put off by its campaign of violence, the WSPU breathed new life into the suffrage movement. The NUWSS felt compelled to revitalize itself, and membership increased dramatically. Oxford students awoke to the idea of votes for women after 1906 and formed suffrage societies within their colleges (at a time when the chancellor of the university was reaffirming his antisuffrage stance). In 1910, two former students of LMH who were aligned with the NUWSS circulated a letter to members of their hall and then to the other women’s societies in which they urged the various college suffrage groups to unite into one organization: “We think that the existence of a University Society with a large roll of members would benefit the suffrage cause by representing educated opinion and by enabling former students to take corporate action.”37 In response, delegates from the college suffrage societies held two meetings at LMH in May 1911 and agreed to form a joint society. After long and difficult discussions, they drew up rules and decided to call themselves the Oxford Women Students Society for Women’s Suffrage. Acknowledging that the name did not trip lightly off the tongue, they nevertheless believed that it was the most accurate title they could agree on. Although more militant representatives raised objections, the group voted to affiliate with the NUWSS. As one person pointed out, “Only individuals, not societies, could belong to the WSPU.”38 All past and present students of Oxford women’s colleges and members of staff were eligible for membership, and the first slate of officers was voted into existence. The OWSSWS hurriedly commissioned a banner—Oxford’s spires outlined in gold on a dark blue background—to carry in a large suffrage march in London the next month. Both the NUWSS and the WSPU took part in the June procession during a short-lived truce between them. Eleanor Jourdain, who with tutor Helena Deneke represented St. Hugh’s, wrote about the event for a 1911 Club Paper and said that it “showed at its best the faculty for organization which even the daily press allows that women possess.” Miss Jourdain, who had participated in earlier suffrage marches, felt that onlookers were more sympathetic to the cause than in the past. “Many men at work on the stands for the Coronation [George V would soon be crowned] wore suffrage colors and cheered as we passed, and we heard no signs of open disagreement.39 Not everyone connected with women’s higher education was pleased with the suffragist activities of Oxford women. Elizabeth Wordsworth never approved, nor did Mrs. Humphry Ward, who took a very public stand against the women’s franchise. Somerville even lost some financial support because students and staff so prominently supported the vote. Discussing Somerville’s role in the movement, Pauline Adams pointed out that Miss Penrose, normally so cautious about any activity that might jeopardize the possibility of securing degrees for Oxford women, wholeheartedly supported the suffrage campaign. Adams noted, however, that the



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principal “must have been very confident that those people whose opinion counted most in the matter of degrees were on the right side in the matter of the vote.40

Degrees for Women: Round Two Some of the people whom Miss Penrose may have had in mind raised the issue of degrees for women again in the fall of 1913. After Lord Curzon’s memorandum, the Hebdomadal Council had adopted in 1909 a resolution to bring the degree question before Congregation “at an early date.” Four years later, no action had been taken. Other reforms suggested by the chancellor, such as abolishing compulsory Greek for responsions, had attracted more attention and concern. Fortunately, an advocate for women appeared on the scene who was in a position to push the matter forward. John L. Stocks, a young St. John’s fellow, had been elected junior proctor in the summer of 1913. He supported women’s rights and was soon to be married to Mary Danvers, a lecturer at the London School of Economics and a committed suffragist. John Stocks’s proctorial status gave him the right to move resolutions in the Hebdomadal Council, and he promptly called for a committee of Council to carry out the earlier resolution regarding degrees for women. Before taking this step, he consulted with women in Oxford, including Annie Rogers, and other supporters to discuss exactly what the committee should aim for. (Prior to these consultations, the principal of Brasenose gave him a piece of tactical advice that had nothing to do with women’s degrees: “When you have to talk to Annie Rogers . . . always go to her house, do not invite her to yours. It will thus be possible for you to end the conversation when you wish.”)41 It was agreed that the committee should push for degrees but not for constitutional privileges. The committee sent a number of proposals to the Delegacy for Women Students for consideration. According to Annie Rogers, these proposals “created the woman undergraduate.”42 If the committee’s recommendations were accepted, women would be formally matriculated into the university, as men were, within two weeks of being admitted to their colleges. After matriculation, they would be eligible for admission to university lectures, laboratories, institutions, and degrees in arts, music, science, and letters. Women would be subject to the same conditions of residence and examinations as men, and all special exemptions for women, which many thought detrimental to their progress, would be abolished. Women could compete for certain university prizes and scholarships and would be required to wear academic dress on specified occasions. The proposals stopped short, however, of recommending that women be given voting rights by membership in Congregation and Convocation, in part because Lord Curzon had opposed such a step in his report to the university. During the spring of 1914, the delegates discussed and revised the pro-

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posals before accepting them and then recommended that the committee of Council draft a statute for admitting women to the university. Although the campaign for degrees had never looked so promising for women, a larger struggle now took precedence. War was declared in August 1914, and university business ground to a halt. Approximately three thousand undergraduates and one hundred postgraduate students were enrolled in the university at the time. By 1915, that student total had been reduced by two-thirds.43 The small number of male students who remained were primarily foreigners or men disqualified for service. University fellows, staff, and servants also joined up. In those early months of the war, few people would have predicted that so many of the men who rushed enthusiastically into service would never return. John Stocks was among those who went off to fight in France. He spent eighteen months in the trenches and received a severe wound; yet unlike many of his colleagues and juniors, he survived to resume his academic life in an Oxford irrevocably changed.

11 A Time of Sacrifice

W

omen who attended Oxford between 1914 and 1918 had the university very nearly to themselves, for almost the entire undergraduate population entered military service. Some women students left to undertake war work before completing their studies, but most remained, yielding to pleas from university authorities that they could better serve their country by obtaining an education. Women students had never been so valuable to Oxford as now; without male students, their presence was necessary to keep the machinery of the university moving. The women students who decided to stay in Oxford, along with their principals and tutors, tried to do as much war work as their academic schedules would allow. Yet, as the war dragged on, they often felt guilty about remaining on the sidelines in Oxford, knowing that many British women, former Oxford students among them, were making significant contributions to the war effort.

A State of War When war was declared on August 4, 1914, a number of Oxford women, both staff and students, were abroad, and some had difficulty getting back to England. In early August, Dorothy Sayers and a friend from Somerville had no sooner arrived in Tours with their chaperone than they found themselves stranded in a city mobilizing for war. It is surprising that they made the trip at all, given the war rumors that had been circulating, but it was now obvious to them that they needed to leave as soon as possible. Unfortunately, all the trains had been commandeered for the military, and they could not escape for almost three weeks, after which they had an uncomfortable journey home. Dorothy was in her element, however, and found the whole adventure exciting. Some students found it impossible to return to Oxford at all. One Somervillian who went home to Canada for the summer could not sail back to England because all Canadian ships had been requisitioned for the war. The Society of Home-Students saw a noticeable decrease in the number of foreign students who usually made up

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part of its group. Many of the European students stayed at home, either by choice—to do war work in their own countries—or by necessity. Margaret Haig Thomas (Somerville 1904) was not stranded outside England when war broke out, but her experience only nine months later illustrated how perilous travel could become in wartime. Margaret, who assisted her father in his colliery business after her abrupt departure from Somerville (see Chapter 10), accompanied him on a business trip to the United States in the spring of 1915. They sailed for home on the Lusitania, a British liner, on May 1, even though they had learned from the German embassy that the ship might be attacked by submarines. The attack came at two o’clock in the afternoon on May 7, off the coast of Ireland, and the liner sank in fifteen minutes. As chaos reigned on deck and lifeboats were launched, Margaret had the presence of mind to retrieve her lifebelt and to unhook her skirt so that it would not drag her down in the water. She jumped overboard just as the ship went under and floated for hours in the cold sea before losing consciousness as night came on. She had no awareness of being rescued by the crew of a tiny steamer, whose crew members feared she was dead when they pulled her from the water. She woke up to find herself sandwiched between blankets in a small bed, completely naked. After the steamer docked at Queenstown, Ireland, Margaret disembarked clad only in a military blanket and the captain’s house slippers. To her joy, she was reunited with her father, who had managed to secure a place on a lifeboat. Although they wanted to get back to England as fast as possible, bronchial pneumonia kept Margaret in Dublin for three weeks, but she was alive, unlike more than a thousand of her fellow passengers. Oxford women who managed to return for Michaelmas term in the autumn of 1914 could already see the effects of war on the city and university. The most obvious change was the absence of undergraduates. A young Home-Student described her brother and his friends as “hurrying into khaki,” worried that it would all be over before they got their chance to see action.1 Men in uniform became a common sight in the town. Infantry battalions and Royal Flying Corps cadets were billeted in various colleges, and they took over the University Parks for their endless drilling and marching. The noise of bugles, tramping feet, and barked commands often distracted LMH students, who lived near the Parks. Doris Dalglish (St. Hilda’s, 1913) got a sharp reminder of what these enthusiastic young men would face in battle as she walked through the Parks one morning on her way to LMH for a tutorial, her head full of poetry. She came upon the stands for bayonet practice. “Sacks hang in rows; nice, fat, well-stuffed sacks into which a man may dig the blade again and again, after learning the correct poise and angle.”2 Feeling suddenly nauseated and with all thoughts of poetry gone, Doris hurried on. In fact, Doris and other Oxford residents witnessed all too soon the devastating effects of frontline action, for the city had been designated



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a center for treating wounded and disabled soldiers. The Examination Schools were converted into a military hospital, and several colleges offered accommodation for convalescents. LMH, in its pastoral setting on the Cherwell, was inspected as a possible home for shell-shocked men, but authorities swiftly concluded that the martial sounds emanating from the Parks would not aid their recovery.

Somerville to Oriel The war caused greater disruption in Somerville than in any of the other women’s colleges because of its proximity to the Radcliffe Infirmary. In March 1915, the War Office notified Miss Penrose and the Somerville Council that the college would be requisitioned as a military hospital in a matter of weeks, which meant that students and staff had to be speedily accommodated elsewhere. The council treasurer learned that Oriel College (just off High Street in the heart of Oxford) was largely empty because its members had joined up, and he negotiated to rent the St. Mary Hall Quadrangle for the duration of the war. St. Mary Hall, a separate entity from Oriel until its incorporation in 1902, could be isolated fairly ­easily from the main college. In fact, the provost of Oriel had a passageway that linked the two parts of the college completely walled off. A curious Oxford Times correspondent went over to take a look and found workers sealing up archways “with a purpose and determination that were worthy the mediaeval bricking-up of a nun, . . . the most forbidding venture-nofurther kind of wall ever seen.3 The provost’s cautious behavior did not surprise or offend Somerville students, who were all too aware that Oriel had been criticized for allowing them to take up quarters there and understood that certain pro­prie­ ties had to be maintained. They were grateful to have a college home at all, even though St. Mary Hall (nicknamed Skimmery) had definite drawbacks. It could accommodate only forty-eight students (approximately half the number in residence), along with Miss Penrose and five staff members. The remaining students, with tutors presiding, lived in nearby houses that Somerville rented for the duration of the war. Meals were no longer a shared event; students in lodgings ate in their own houses for two reasons. First, the Skimmery dining room was too small to seat everyone, and second, the college did not want women students walking after dark in blacked-out Oxford. Consequently, the corporate life of the college became unavoidably fragmented during the war years, but Miss Penrose preached that all students and staff should view their removal from Somerville as helping the war effort and not grumble about a little discomfort. Miss Penrose also warned Somerville students to be even more circumspect in their new surroundings so that Oriel would have no cause to regret its hospitality. On their first evening in new quarters, she urged

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everyone to exercise self-restraint and avoid conspicuousness. Still, it was impossible to be invisible. Dorothy Sayers wrote her parents about an incident in which an elderly man outside Oriel exclaimed in horror when he caught sight of a young woman entering a college gateway with flowers in her arms.4 Whether Miss Penrose heard about the behavior of one young Somervillian is not clear, but there is no doubt she would have been highly displeased. Enid Starkie, who would later become one of Somerville’s more flamboyant and eccentric fellows, entered college in 1916, having been edu­ cated in her native Ireland. She quickly made her mark as a person to be reckoned with: intelligent, vivid, temperamental, and neurotic. Enid loved to play pranks and had little regard for rules and regulations; yet the principal and staff were remarkably tolerant with her, possibly because they did not know the extent of her unruly, though essentially harmless, behavior. In her third year, she lived in one of the rented houses near Oriel, came over to Skimmery for a nightly bath, then walked back up the High to her lodging clad only in her nightgown under an overcoat. Constance Savery, another Somerville student, remembered the night Enid had stopped to chat with her and some other friends when one of the tutors happened to walk by. Glancing in their direction, she at first could not believe her eyes and, despite Enid’s loud protests, hauled her off to the porter’s lodge so that her clothes could be sent for. The tutor may have kept the incident to herself because Constance never heard of any repercussions from Miss Penrose.5 Fortunately for the reputation of the college, there were no duplications of Enid Starkie in Somerville. Most of the students behaved as discreetly as ever, possibly even more so in an Oxford of little merriment or lightheartedness.

Leaving College for War Work During the fall of 1914, most Oxford women felt little urgency to abandon their studies and actively engage in war work. Many anticipated an early victory for Britain and its allies and therefore saw no reason to suspend their education. A few who did leave early and wrote about their war experiences deserve special mention: Charis (Barnett) Frankenburg, Lucy Maria (Wood) Boston, Naomi (Haldane) Mitchison, and most famous of all, Vera Brittain. All four found it impossible to justify their sheltered Oxford existences while loved ones risked their lives, and each of them settled on nursing as the path to worthwhile service. It frequently proved a hard one. They often encountered hostility from nurses who wanted to protect their own status, and the volunteers found themselves undertrained, overworked, and frequently dismayed by hospital regimens that provided less than exemplary care for patients. As young women from comfortable middle-class homes, they had rarely been exposed to unpleasant sights and



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smells, but now they had to steel themselves not to flinch at the terrible scenes they faced daily. Three of the four married young, under the pressure of war, and never resumed their Oxford work, although all had varied and distinguished later careers. Only Vera Brittain returned to Oxford after the 1918 Armistice, but she said that going back felt “disturbingly like a return to school after a lifetime of adult experience; nevertheless, I pinned to Oxford . . . such hopes for the future as I still possessed.”6 The first to leave was Charis Barnett, who had spent two happy years at Somerville and was looking forward to the arrival of her brother, who had planned to take up a Balliol scholarship in the fall of 1914. Like so many others, however, he joined up almost immediately in August, and Charis could not face being in Oxford without him. She obtained permission for leave from Somerville and worked at a variety of war-related jobs in London over the next year. Her brother was killed in August 1915, close to the anniversary of the day on which he had excitedly enlisted. Desperate for more meaningful work, Charis learned that the Friends’ War Victims Relief Committee was looking for volunteers to go to France. She signed on, indicating a preference to work with babies, and was advised to train as a midwife before leaving England. When the Clapham Maternity Hospital in London accepted Charis as a trainee, she sent a telegram to her mother that read: “Unless you object am entering maternity hospital immediately.” Mrs. Barnett hastily traveled to London, completely astonishing Charis with her misinterpretation of the message. After six months’ training, Charis finally got to France in the fall of 1916, assigned to the Friends’ maternity hospital at Châlons-sur-Marne. Conditions were extremely primitive—no hot water or electricity and ancient drains that were always clogged or frozen—but she and her fellow workers coped as best they could. Charis was grateful to be useful, although she did not like the Quaker atmosphere. Still grieving for her brother, she thought the pacifists smug and self-righteous and inside her coat secretly wore the Military Cross ribbon given her by a friend. After a year in France, she returned to England but not to Oxford. In 1917, she married her cousin Captain Sydney Frankenburg, who had been her brother’s good friend.7 During the spring and summer of 1915, the rest of the quartet left Oxford. Lucy Maria Wood, had entered Somerville in 1914 but found it hard to settle down to academic work in wartime. Brought up in an intensely pious Methodist family, whose home was decorated with lines of Scripture painted along the walls, she was nevertheless a headstrong and unconventional young woman. Initially thrilled at the idea of going to Oxford, she found the restrictions of college life irksome and declared that she had no intention of abiding by the rules. The kind of rebellious student all women principals feared, she might never have adapted (or might even have been expelled) if the war had not intervened. She also lost all respect

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for Miss Penrose during a visit from one of her brothers, who had just been released from the hospital after an operation. When Lucy introduced him to the principal, Miss Penrose curtly asked, “Young man, why are you not in uniform?” As Lucy wrote, “That finished her for me,” and she made her decision to leave college.8 She trained for two months as a VAD in a London hospital in the spring of 1915, then worked as a nurse in Cambridge while awaiting assignment to France.9 Dismissed for indecent conduct (powdering her nose, wearing jewelry on duty, and riding on a motor bike behind a young man), Lucy finally found work in a French military hospital in early 1916. Before she left England, she and her cousin Harold Boston fell in love, and when he was called to the front, she impetuously agreed to marry him after they spent the night together. As she put it in her memoir: “For God’s sake, instead of all this death, let us have some life. If a man only wanted to have an heir to his name, would I refuse?” She hurried home and sent a telegram to her mother informing her of their plans. A sister was dispatched to Oxford where Lucy was staying and, greatly embarrassed, delivered a reply: “Mother says, if it’s for that, don’t.” Lucy commented, “But, as usual, I did.”10 Naomi Haldane left college after her first year. She had grown up in Oxford in the family home at the end of Linton Road, where her mother kept chickens and Jersey cows and her father worked in a laboratory built onto the house, near the present site of Wolfson College. Her father was J. S. Haldane, fellow of New College, who specialized in respiratory physiology and did groundbreaking work on the effect of gases on the lungs and heart. At the outbreak of war, almost all the young men Naomi knew, including her adored older brother Jack (who would become a pioneering geneticist), rapidly enlisted, and Naomi felt left behind. When her brother’s friend Dick Mitchison, now a cavalry officer, impulsively proposed in August 1914, she just as impulsively said yes, although she was only sixteen. Naomi later acknowledged that she did not love Dick at that time but was so eager to be part of the general excitement that she might have agreed to marry the first man in uniform who asked her. Her engagement initially did not change her life very much. She still lived at home under the watchful protection of her parents and was expected to be in bed by ten o’clock in the bedroom she had long shared with her mother. She began studying botany as a Home-Student in the fall of 1914. Naomi enjoyed her lectures and lab work and particularly liked the little house in Ship Street where Home-Students congregated because it was the only place in Oxford she could feel free from parental control. She could not escape the appalling war news, however, and the casualty lists now contained the names of friends and relations. Increasingly impatient with her student life, Naomi won permission from her reluctant parents to train as a VAD and went to a London hospi-



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tal in the summer of 1915. Naomi knew nothing about even the rudiments of housework because servants had always taken care of that at home. She had never mopped floors or changed beds; when told to make a pot of tea, she did not realize that she needed to boil water. More interesting to her were the surgical wards, where she nursed men who had recently come from the trenches with horrific wounds. Her nursing stint was short, however, for she came down with scarlet fever in August 1915 and returned to Oxford in an ambulance. After recovering, Naomi married Dick in February 1916, but they had only a week together before he went back to the front. Dick received a severe head wound some months later but slowly regained his health with Naomi’s help. Before the war ended, Naomi had the first of her seven children, an event that seemed an important affirmation of life in the midst of so much death.11 These three women, despite great personal losses and hardships, recounted their war experiences in an almost offhand, sometimes even humorous, way from a distance of many years. Vera Brittain, on the other hand, was only forty in 1933 when she published Testament of Youth, the most famous chronicle of World War I from a woman’s point of view, and her memories were still agonizingly vivid. Her autobiography is a moving and sometimes shattering account of how the war destroyed many of her most cherished dreams and of her struggle to work through personal pain toward spiritual regeneration. Vera was the daughter of a prosperous manufacturer in Buxton, a spa town near the Peak District in Derbyshire, and was expected to conform to provincial ideas about gently reared young ladies. The conservative and snobbish atmosphere of Buxton stifled her, however, and after leaving school in 1912, Vera pleaded to be sent on to college. Her father refused, maintaining he had already spent quite enough on her education. Through a series of happy chances, however, she was permitted to take a scholarship examination for Somerville in March 1914, and to her astonishment, won an exhibition that would take effect in the upcoming fall term. In the interval, she met Roland Leighton, a school friend of her brother Edward, and they felt an immediate attraction to each other. Both young men were planning to attend Oxford in the autumn as well, and Vera, already delighted that she and Edward would be there together, had extra cause for rejoicing. Roland told her he would even face “a hedge of chaperones and Principals with perfect equanimity, if I may be allowed to see something of you on the other side.”12 In the end, Vera went to Oxford by herself; Roland and Edward both applied for army commissions. During Vera’s first few months at Oxford, the war seemed very remote. Roland and Edward had not yet been called to active duty, and Vera responded enthusiastically to the exhilarating stimulus of Somerville. Her happiness did not last, for the war news became progressively grim, and she felt ashamed to be living out her dream while Roland, Edward, and

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thousands of other young men had been deprived of theirs. When Roland went to the front in March 1915, Vera could no longer bear her comfortable existence and obtained Miss Penrose’s permission to take a year’s leave so that she could undertake nursing training. As a VAD probationer, Vera endured long hours, arduous work, and hostile matrons without complaint. She thought it her duty to suffer and consoled herself thusly: “He has to face far worse things than any sight or act I could come across; he can bear it—and so can I. Truly the War had made masochists of us all.”13 Vera found it easier to cope with hard physical labor than with the acute anxiety she felt for Roland’s welfare. When she learned that he had leave to come home over the Christmas holidays, she was overjoyed to think of him being safe for at least a few days. On December 27, 1915, Vera received a telephone call from Roland’s sister, relaying the news that Roland had died of wounds in France on December 23. Stunned and devastated, Vera no longer wanted to remain in England and applied for a posting abroad. She informed Miss Penrose that she would not return to Somerville until the war ended. After a brief nursing stint in Malta, Vera went to France in August 1917 to serve in a military hospital. She found the work exhausting and heartbreaking and often felt helpless in the face of so much pain and misery. Still, she bitterly resented her father’s demand in April 1918 that she return to England to look after her mother, who had suffered a nervous breakdown. Vera could not refuse the claims of her family, however, and left France, frustrated and angry. The final blow fell when she and her parents received notice that Edward had been killed on June 15, 1918, in Italy. Vera returned to Oxford in April 1919, after the Armistice, but felt she had left youth and happiness behind.

Former Students and the War By the spring of 1915, casualty lists were rising, and increasing numbers of men were recruited from Britain to replace those lost in battle. Consequently, thousands of British women, including former Oxford students, answered the call to help keep the nation running and stepped into a va­ rie­ty of jobs, either in a voluntary or paid capacity. They took up posts in a wide range of government ministries and departments and organized relief and philanthropic work at home, among other jobs. Many saw the war firsthand, at home or abroad, as nurses, physicians, canteen organizers for exhausted soldiers, relief workers, and administrators of the new women’s military corps. Like the young Oxford women who left college to take up nursing, former students signed on as volunteer nurses with a variety of organizations, and a few performed significant work as physicians, such as Rosalie Job-



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son (LMH 1905). Jobson had just finished her medical training in London when the war began. In September 1914, she went to Paris as a member of the Women’s Hospital Corps, which had been newly formed by Dr. ­Louisa Garrett Anderson (daughter of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, England’s first woman physician) and Dr. Flora Murray. The Corps was small (about twenty female doctors, nurses, and orderlies), privately equipped, and eager to begin work wherever needed, but the British War Office had turned a deaf ear to their offer of help. The French proved more welcoming, and the Corps set up a medical unit in the Hotel Claridge in Paris, which had been transformed into a hospital. Before the medical women could even unpack their luggage, they were tending their first batch of patients. In October, during a brief quiet period, the Corps received news that Boulogne was overcrowded with wounded. Rosalie Jobson and another young surgeon were dispatched there to render aid if they could and immediately confronted a horrifying situation: Eight hundred wounded and dying soldiers lay in makeshift sheds, waiting to be shipped back to England, with only four nurses and no doctors to tend them. Within hours, Jobson and her colleague set up a rough surgical theatre and began operating on the more serious cases. From morning to night, they took turns as anesthesiologist and surgeon until army doctors finally turned up several days later. Even then, they continued to work alongside their male counterparts until the situation was brought under control.14 The War Office, finally aware of the Women’s Hospital Corps’ valuable work, decided that it could use their services after all. In the spring of 1915, Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Murray were invited to take charge of a military hospital in London to be fully staffed by women. They accepted, transferred the Corps—including Rosalie Jobson—to the Endell Street Hospital in May 1915, and dealt with more than twenty-six thousand patients before the war finally came to a close. Many former students took part in relief efforts through the numerous organizations that sprang up during the war, but few devoted as much time to this cause as Margery Fry. Early in 1915, she went to the devastated Marne area in France to organize relief work there as part of the Friends’ War Victims Relief Committee. With firm efficiency, she oversaw the construction of temporary homes for refugees, secured machinery so that farmers could once again tend their fields, and organized an embroidery workshop for refugee women that benefited them both psychologically and materially. The workshop not only helped divert their minds from the war’s destruction but also put some money in their pockets, for Fry sent their handiwork to be sold in London. When she went back to England in December 1917, her war work continued. Margery Fry toured the country to raise funds for European relief, even though she had doubts about her fitness for the task, remarking that “I don’t raise the tears enough.”15 A number of former Oxford students contributed to the war effort

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through the women’s military corps. In the winter of 1917, the formation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was announced, its purpose to substitute women for men in certain employments throughout the army. The idea of a women’s unit had been broached as early as the spring of 1915, but military authorities did not initially warm to it. As they became more desperate for soldiers to replace those lost in battle, however, they needed to take able-bodied soldiers out of clerical, catering, transportation, and warehousing jobs and send them to the front. Since many of these jobs classified as women’s work anyway, the army did an about-face and put women in those roles in both Britain and Europe. The navy and the air force followed suit, recruiting women for the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) and the WRAFs (Women’s Royal Air Force). Most of the Oxford students who joined the new women’s services did so as administrators, not as members of the rank and file. Jean McWilliams (Somerville 1903) served as an assistant deputy chief controller with the WAACs, while another Somervillian in the same branch, Winifred Haythorne (1911), rose to the position of deputy chief controller in France and was appointed OBE in 1919 for distinguished service to her country.16 Of all the Oxford women who experienced the war firsthand, none viewed it from Gertrude Bell’s position. Owing to Bell’s detailed knowledge of the Middle East, the British government recruited her to work as an intelligence officer, first in Egypt and then in Iraq. In 1917, she obtained a key intelligence post as oriental secretary in Baghdad and thus had the distinction of being the only female political officer in the British forces. Not all former students believed in aiding the war machine. Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton, as we have seen, produced a magazine that counteracted what they saw as the one-sided war propaganda from the British press. Maude Royden and Kathleen Courtney also took pacifist stances and worked to promote peace, not to further the British cause (see Chapter 8).

Students Who Stayed in College Women students who remained in Oxford and continued their studies often wondered if they were doing the right thing when they heard about the wartime contributions of former students and British women in general. They found it hard to concentrate on lectures and essays when the outside world was in turmoil, and Ruth Butler, secretary to Bertha Johnson, aptly described the woman student’s dilemma: Two contrary calls were sounded in her ears—the one bidding her rush to war-work, not selfishly educate herself while Rome was burning; the other, urging on her the duty to stop and train to fill the place of men who had gone forth.17



A Time of Sacrifice

Although they understood why women students were restless and conflicted, those most directly connected with the Oxford women’s colleges did not want to see a mass defection to the war effort. The future of women’s education in Oxford might well have been at risk if the women’s colleges had been forced to close down during the war years for lack of students. There was no guarantee that sufficient money and energy could be found to get them up and running again. And, for the first time, to continue functioning as an academic institution and to preserve the semblance of normality, the university needed women students. Women principals and tutors therefore urged the wisdom of staying on, stressing the importance of obtaining qualifications for useful work after college. Two prominent Oxford men added weight to that argument. H.A.L. Fisher, former president of the Somerville Council and now minister of education, sympathized with women students whose sense of duty pulled them in two directions. Nevertheless, he believed they would serve their country best by staying in college, particularly “in view of the great importance to the nation of securing an ample stock of highly-trained and highly-cultivated women in the teaching profession.”18 Professor Gilbert Murray spoke in a similar vein about the need for educated and capable women after the war, especially in the teaching field, but argued against a purely utilitarian view: Oxford has always stood for the spiritual side of education. Cling to that! We cannot raise the world without it. And if you enter on the work of education in this spirit, you will find satisfaction.19 Most women students took these words to heart and continued with their academic work. They eased their consciences by participating in a variety of war-related projects, both during term and in the holidays. When Oxford welcomed numerous Belgian refugees who flooded into Britain after the 1914 German invasion, many Oxford students, along with their tutors, assisted in their resettlement. In a letter to her parents, Dorothy Sayers described how she and several other Somervillians readied a house for a family of nine. Because Dorothy and her friends knew very little about kitchen appliances, Lady Mary Murray’s cook was deputized to explain the proper operation of the range. The students then translated the instructions into French for the new lady of the house, who passed on the information in Flemish to her cook and housemaid.20 Dorothy did not mention, and probably did not know, whether hot meals ever actually appeared on the Belgian family’s table. In other ventures, students planted and tended victory gardens on college grounds and knitted socks or sewed shirts for soldiers. Some traveled to the war depot in nearby Didcot, where they packed boxes or rolled bandages, while others volunteered to help wounded soldiers recuperating in

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Oxford. During vacations, many students put in long and backbreaking hours as farm laborers, picking fruit or hops according to the season. Others worked in government offices, factories, canteens, and relief agencies. Although their war contributions may have seemed trivial compared to the exciting and important work being done by those who had already left college, they felt their unpaid labor helped in part to justify their decision to remain in Oxford. Vera Brittain later said that she felt sorry for women students who never knew Oxford except in wartime, when “no gaiety or stimulus relieved the austerity of this unfamiliar life.”21 There was the unrelenting anxiety for friends and loved ones in service and the dread of telegrams, which rarely brought happy news. As the war ground on, the government introduced Spartan measures that required all the women’s colleges to be economical with coal, electricity, and hot water. No longer could students have fires in their rooms every day, and they were forced to work together in a public room that was designated to have heat, thereby losing their much-valued quiet and privacy. Colleges switched off the lights by 11 p.m., and students had to resort to candles if they wanted to continue reading or writing. Food became increasingly scarce, and the often-unappetizing meals served at the women’s colleges grew even worse. Boiled beets began appearing on the Somerville table with dismaying frequency, prompting a Swiss student to finally cry out, “What ees this bloodee stuff?”22 Sugar was rationed, and some students craved sweets. One young woman at St. Hilda’s found a store that sold damaged chocolate, and although she suspected that it came from floor sweepings, she was happy to eat it.23 Ruth Butler recalled that “by 1918 life had become very grim, and the chief surviving inspiration was the instinct to ‘carry on.’ ”24

Staff Members’ War Work Women on staff were not immune to the restlessness that affected students, and they too agonized about how best to contribute to the war effort. Most remained in college because they felt that their talents could best be used in an academic capacity and because they believed that their continued presence was necessary for the college to function properly. Like the students, they limited their war work to what they could reconcile with college responsibilities or undertake during the long vacations. Hilda Lorimer from Somerville wanted more direct contact with the war and got it through her work with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. A Scot herself, Miss Lorimer took pride in this organization and its founder, Elsie Inglis. Inglis had been a successful physician in Edinburgh before war was declared and wanted to be of use to the Allied cause. She conceived of a scheme for setting up hospital units in Europe staffed by women, then raised a large sum of money, mostly from women, to fund the hospitals,



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only to discover that military authorities were not interested. They turned down her offer with the words, “My good lady, go home and sit still.”25 Such rebuffs were not new to Dr. Inglis, and if the British did not want her services, she would take them elsewhere. France and Serbia proved more than eager to accept her help, and Dr. Inglis and her colleagues established a number of hospital units in those areas. Their work in Serbia was particularly impressive because of the country’s chaotic conditions, and Dr. Inglis was widely praised for her courage and resourcefulness. Worn out from the stress of coping with almost impossible odds and ill with cancer, Dr. Inglis died on November 26, 1917. The Times described her as “one of the greatest heroines of the war.”26 Hilda Lorimer spent the summers of 1917 and 1918 in Salonika, Greece, in one of Dr. Inglis’s Scottish Women’s Hospitals, braving both heat and disease (typhus epidemics were common). She took on the demanding job of orderly and was present when fire destroyed much of the town. A fellow tutor, Grace Hadow, found her life turned in a completely new direction as a result of the war. A former Somerville student (1900), she had been English tutor at LMH since 1906, although she cut back on tutoring in 1911 to care for her ailing mother. In the spring of 1917, when Grace’s mother died, she resigned her position at LMH to become subsection director of a welfare department in the Ministry of Munitions. Social welfare in factories was in its infancy, but authorities were beginning to realize that, for workers to be productive and efficient, their physical and emotional needs must be seen to. Although Grace had few precedents on which to draw, under her leadership, the unit developed into a cohesive one that successfully coped with a variety of problems. During her two years in the ministry, Grace became convinced of the need for social services, especially for society’s less privileged members. She also learned that she was a creative administrator, which determined the course of her future work. In 1920, she joined the staff at Barnett House, a social training center set up in Oxford in 1914 (see Chapter 8). In the nine years that she worked there, she became a prime mover in fostering adult education in rural areas, and the house accepted her resignation in 1929 with much regret. Grace did not leave Oxford, however, for she had been appointed to succeed Christine Burrows as principal of the Society of Home-Students. The war cut sharply into the lives of other members of women’s colleges, though their names might not be associated with specific war work. They worked alongside students in vegetable gardens, at the Didcot depot, in canteens, or at sewing parties, and they all assisted with Belgian and Serbian refugees. Their teaching and tutoring duties increased in the absence of male dons, and some were even entrusted with delivering university lectures to both women students and the few undergraduates in residence. During the war years, most women tutors, whether they remained in Oxford or ventured farther afield, found their opportunity for indepen-

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dent research and writing severely curtailed. It was a time of sacrifice, and few people escaped untouched.

Autumn of 1918 In October 1918, just when it seemed that life could hardly grow more dreary, Oxford was struck with a virulent form of influenza, which grew into a worldwide epidemic that claimed millions of lives. Among the ­Oxford women’s colleges, LMH was hardest hit. The principal, Miss JexBlake, along with Eleanor Lodge and Janet Spens, English tutor, were almost the only ones left on their feet, and because nurses and doctors were in short supply, they took over nursing duties for the whole college. The only known treatment was bed rest and aspirin; one student died when her flu turned into pneumonia. Eleanor Lodge remembered being so tired by nightfall that she did not have the strength to get undressed. She and Janet Spens lay on the floor until they could summon the energy to get up and retire to their proper beds. When Janet finally succumbed after most of the students had recovered, Eleanor was almost too exhausted to nurse her. She recalled helping Janet onto the sofa so that she could make her bed and then falling asleep herself before she completed the task.27 Katharine Moore (LMH 1918), one of the students struck down by the flu, remembered with gratitude how LMH sent her and other convalescents to small hotels in nearby villages to regain their strength. There she ate good food by wartime standards and relaxed in peaceful surroundings. When she returned to Oxford on November 11 by taxi, she was puzzled to see crowds of excited people in the street. Her driver had to tell her the news: “The war’s over!”28 The city erupted in celebration when word went out around noon that the armistice had been signed. Ina Brooksbank (St. Hugh’s 1917) was attending a lecture at Magdalen when she heard church bells and cheering. The lecturer paused briefly and then carried on, giving Ina and her fellow students no choice but to wait until he let them go. As she and her friends cycled up toward Carfax, they were surrounded by throngs of people and almost deafened by the shouting, pealing bells, and honking horns. Young men climbed lampposts to plant flags on top and cheer wildly. When Ina and the other St. Hugh’s students finally got back to college, they rang their bicycle bells in unison and trooped excitedly into lunch. To their astonishment, Miss Jourdain was furious over what she considered undignified behavior, warning them yet again that any unseemly actions on their part might hinder the chance for degrees.29 Another student who was present for the dressing down remarked: “We sat in our places like frozen images. She had hit below the belt, so to speak.”30 Despite her anger, Miss Jourdain sanctioned a celebration in college, as did the principals of the other women’s societies. Over the next few days,



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each held in-college special dinners, sing-alongs, women-only dances, and prayers of thanksgiving. The operative phrase here is “in college.” On no account did the principals want women students on the street sharing in Oxford’s tumult. The principals possibly were behaving exactly as their charges’ parents would want them to, but women students might be forgiven if they felt that controlled exuberance was paltry recompense for the four grim years they—and the entire country—had just endured. After the guns fell silent, the scale of the slaughter could be assessed, and the figures were appalling. By a conservative estimate, ten million ­people were killed and another twenty million maimed. Britain alone experienced more than 700,000 casualties, but thousands more were wounded and mutilated. A high proportion of those killed were the young men destined to become the nation’s leaders, had they been allowed a normal life span. Oxford and Cambridge, supposedly the training ground for Britain’s leadership class, lost more of their men who served than other British universities, and the proportion was higher than for the country as a whole. Approximately one in five (over 18 percent) of the Oxford men who joined up died in the war (the numbers are similar for Cambridge), and some colleges had appallingly high death rates. Corpus Christi, for example, lost 25 percent of its members, with University, Oriel, Balliol, and Magdalen not far behind. One among many depressing statistics from the war is that 70 percent of the Oxford men who died were under the age of thirty—­junior officers usually did not survive long. One Oxford writer commented: “Oxford and Cambridge had a gift to offer which struck the onlooker as richer than most, more brilliant, more pathetic, more inevitably suggesting the idea, by all worldly standards, of incalculable and heroic waste.”31 But the dead were not coming back, and after the colleges erected memorials to those they had lost and conducted services of remembrance, it was time to try to shift attention to the needs of the living.

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omen students easily outnumbered the males in residence at the university when peace was declared in November 1918, but their majority status quickly changed. By the start of the new term in January 1919, undergraduates were once again a ­visible presence. Male dons, scouts, and staff members were also part of the altered scene, but for women, the sight of male students in lecture halls really signified that the war had ended. What was at first a trickle over the next months became a flood as ex-servicemen poured into the city. Some came to resume their interrupted studies, and the university acknowledged their war service by allowing them to count it against their residence requirement and to take shortened honour courses. Others were just beginning university life, having postponed matriculation when war broke out. These former soldiers were joined by young men fresh out of school, with the result that the men’s colleges actually became overcrowded. By October 1919, less than a year after the armistice, there were well over four thousand undergraduates, the most Oxford had ever held.

Return and Readjustment Of the Oxford men whose lives had been disrupted by the war, a few found it impossible to return to a university where they had once been so carefree. Harold Macmillan, the future prime minister, was among their number. Although he had been badly wounded in the war, he later said it was not his injury that kept him from going back to Balliol. It was not just that I was still a cripple. There were plenty of cripples. But I could not face it. To me it was a city of ghosts.1 Macmillan was correct in saying that his war wounds would not have stood out if he had returned to Oxford. Many students bore physical scars from the last four years, and it was not uncommon to see men with crutches or canes or men without a limb or an eye. The mental scars 176



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were often harder to detect, but some men did not find it easy to put their war years behind them. The poet and novelist Robert Graves, who entered St. John’s College in 1919, returned from the war shell-shocked and often tormented by recurrent dreams about his wartime experiences. He would find himself at lectures, trying to concentrate on the subject at hand, when scenes from France would take over his mind, and he would become oblivi­ ous to the present. These episodes lasted for almost ten years, long after his student days had ended.2 Women returning from war service also faced readjustment. Vera Brittain felt she was at rock bottom, both emotionally and spiritually, by war’s end. When she reentered Somerville in April 1919, she hoped that students and staff would show sympathy for all she had suffered and lost during the war but instead found that people had little interest in her sacrifices or her grief. In her first interview with Miss Penrose, Vera yearned for some special word of welcome, but the principal made no mention of her years away and conducted the interview as though Vera’s return was nothing out of the ordinary. She found only one congenial friend during her first term back, but that young woman died unexpectedly of pneumonia in the summer of 1919. Reeling from the blow of yet another death, Vera was close to a psychological and physical breakdown when the fall term began. She felt completely alone among the crowd of students and was plagued by insomnia and nightmares. Glancing in her mirror one evening, Vera imagined that her face was disfigured and that she was growing a beard. On first encountering Winifred Holtby, who would become her dearest friend, at a history tutorial, Vera felt nothing but hostility toward the tall, vibrant young woman whose vitality was in stark contrast to her own fragile state. Matters did not improve when Winifred, the secretary of Somerville’s revived debating society, invited Vera to propose for debate the motion that four years’ travel was a better education than four years at a university. Vera accepted and vehemently declared that university life had no value in gaining experience or knowledge of the world. In a speech that was as witty and light as Vera’s was humorless and severe, Winifred, as one of the opposers, took Vera to task for her uncompromising position. The voting went unanimously against Vera, who felt she had been deliberately set up as an object of ridicule. It was some time before she understood that her self-pity and aloof superiority offended many and only exacerbated her sense of isolation. Vera’s return to mental health began a few months later when she lay in bed with a cold, and Winifred unexpectedly appeared with a gift of grapes. When Winifred came back the next day to talk, the two young women found they had more in common than they had supposed. Winifred had entered Somerville in 1917, but she, like Vera earlier, could not bear the cocoon of Oxford in wartime and joined the WAACs in 1918. Although posted to France, she remained relatively isolated from the fight-

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ing. Still, Winifred had enough firsthand knowledge of the war to forge a connection with Vera. Friendship grew between them, and Vera wrote that she “felt like an icicle beginning to melt in the gathering warmth of the pale spring sunshine.”3 Not until the spring of 1921, however, was she finally free from the hallucination of disfigurement. In truth, readjustment was not easy for many former students; yet most of the men who had served wanted to forget the horrors of the past four years as quickly as possible. They resurrected their prewar clubs and so­cie­ ties and once again took up sports. In the university parks, the smack of a cricket bat replaced the sounds of bugles and marching feet, and Eights Week with its boat races returned in the spring of 1919 after a three-year hiatus.4 The undergraduates brought the Union, Oxford’s famous debating society, back to life, staged amateur theatricals, and launched magazines. Returning undergraduates created a special problem for Somerville. Oriel now needed St. Mary’s Hall for its own students and began pressing hard to get the Somervillians out. In the early part of 1919, however, the War Office still had control of Somerville’s buildings for a hospital, and Miss Penrose could get no official word on when an evacuation would take place. Finally, she was informed that Somerville would get the college back in time to make it habitable for students returning in the fall. Meanwhile, Somerville stayed put in borrowed quarters. One warm evening in June, several Somerville students decided to sleep under the stars on the grassy quadrangle outside St. Mary’s Hall. Around midnight, they heard male voices and realized that the Oriel men were knocking a hole in the wall that sealed them off from the main college. They roused Miss Lorimer, and by the time she arrived on the scene, several young men were already on the Somerville side, thoroughly drunk, and dancing around the pickaxe that had enabled them to gain entry. Miss Lorimer commanded them to leave at once, and they meekly did so, whereupon Miss Penrose was notified. When she appeared, the Oriel porter, on his side of the breach, tried to apologize for the disturbance, but Miss Penrose asked him to summon the provost. The provost duly came but declined Miss Penrose’s invitation to come through the opening and talk to her about the situation. He did promise, however, that the men would give her no more trouble. Not satisfied with this response, Miss Penrose kept an on-site vigil throughout the night. Oriel was embarrassed by the episode, and Miss Penrose received numerous letters of apology. Somerville students, mostly amused, commemorated the evening by naming their next boat Pickaxe.5 Despite this incident, most of the men who came back from the war seemed more serious about their academic work and less inclined to fri­ volity or rowdiness than previous generations of undergraduates, certainly more so than those in pre-1914 Oxford or the young sybarites who would predominate in the 1920s. University authorities had initially been nervous



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that returning ex-servicemen would prove a disruptive force, unwilling to submit to the rules and regulations for undergraduates now that they were older and presumably more sophisticated. Their anxiety proved unfounded. As one writer put it: “Old soldiers were thankful to submit to the tame docilities of civil life.”6 Raymond Massey, the future actor, agreed. When he came to Balliol in 1919 after serving in the Canadian army, he remarked that his fellow students “faced with equanimity, even with pleasure, the restrictions that a wise and ancient institution saw fit to impose on us ‘junior members of the university.’ After all, it was rather cosy to be regarded as still youthful.”7

Changed Role for Women, Locally and Nationally For three years, women students had had the university almost to themselves; now, they returned to their role as second-class citizens. They could not always secure chairs in the lecture halls and sometimes had to sit on the floor or the windowsills. Some dons reasserted their misogyny now that men were once again in the majority. Ina Brooksbank of St. Hugh’s recalled one don who announced that “he didn’t lecture to women” and sent them packing.8 The clock could not be easily set back, however. During the war years, women had been told how valuable they were in keeping the university afloat. In gratitude and in response to a call for more medical personnel during the war, Oxford passed a statute in July 1917 to open the first examination for the degree of Bachelor of Medicine to women. (Examinations did not lead to degrees, however; women were still barred from that privilege.) Although the statute passed without opposition, the professor of human anatomy showed that Victorian attitudes toward women had not been entirely extinguished. He refused to teach this subject to men and women in the same room and insisted that women be segregated. His objection was surprisingly fastidious at a time when women doctors were caring for and operating on wounded soldiers, and young nurses, like the VADs, were not sheltered from the sight of naked men. As Vera Brittain remarked of her patients: “Short of actually going to bed with them, there was hardly an intimate service that I did not perform for one or another in the course of four years.”9 The professor’s refusal went unchallenged, however, and a separate laboratory for women had to be found. The Clothworkers’ Company of London, which had formerly provided scholarship funds to Somerville, once more proved its generosity to women by donating money for space in the university museum. Women may have lost the chance to dissect cadavers alongside men, but they ended up with more room and better lighting than they would have had in the men’s laboratory. Another male bastion crumbled shortly after the armistice when the university passed a statute on November 19, 1918, that opened to women

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the examination for the Bachelor of Civil Law degree. Only the examination for the Bachelor of Divinity degree now remained closed to them. Despite these concessions, it remained unclear where women stood in relation to the university, particularly now that undergraduates were once more predominant. The issue of degrees for women, which seemed so promising in 1914, had been shelved during the war, when no controversial matters could be brought before the university. But if many thought that the war would seriously hinder the movement toward degrees, that the university would have too many important issues to grapple with after such an upheaval, they were wrong. Less than two years after the war ended, women at Oxford found themselves in a transformed relationship to the university, more liberal than anything proposed in prewar Oxford. The status of women was also changing on a national level, a trend that no doubt influenced subsequent events at Oxford. Of major importance was the extension of voting rights to women. In the summer of 1916, a bill was introduced in Parliament to update the register of voters, but lawmakers faced a problem. Under a previous reform act, male householders who fulfilled a twelve-month residence requirement prior to an election had been given the right to vote. Men who went off to war and disrupted their residence requirement would not be qualified to vote if an election were held before the war ended. Such a situation could clearly not be tolerated; men who were fighting for their country should not be struck from the electoral rolls. Consequently, the government agreed to revise the registration system so that it would be more democratic in general and retain the vote for servicemen in particular. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies under Millicent Fawcett, refusing to let such an opportunity go to waste, lobbied hard for the inclusion of a women’s suffrage clause in any new franchise reform. At an all-party conference of members of Parliament in the fall of 1916, a women’s suffrage proposal was introduced after delegates had simplified the residential qualification and had unanimously agreed to recommend that voting rights be granted to all adult males twenty-one and over. Members were not prepared to give women equal suffrage with men, however, and recommended that only female householders over thirty or the wives of householders be enfranchised. Why did they set an age limit? Some historians contend that delegates fixed an age bar so that women, who outnumbered men, could not achieve a voting majority. In addition, some delegates believed that women over thirty were likely to be more stable and less radical than younger women. Although most suffragists opposed the age limitation, they accepted the compromise, agreeing with Millicent Fawcett that they “should greatly prefer an imperfect scheme that can pass.”10 The conference recommendations were eventually embodied in a Repre­ sentation of the People bill in June 1917, which passed easily through the House of Commons in December of that year. Only the House of Lords



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could stop the bill’s progress, and there was some anxiety that it would do just that. After a dramatic three-day debate, Lord Curzon, always ardently opposed to women’s suffrage, rose to address the House on January 11, 1918. After a long speech in which he voiced his antisuffrage sentiments, he suddenly announced that he wanted to avoid conflict with the House of Commons, that women’s suffrage seemed inevitable, and that he wished to abstain. It was a major blow to the antisuffrage group, including Mrs. Humphry Ward, who was present in the visitors’ gallery. She and Lord Curzon had been allies in this cause for ten years, and she felt betrayed. When the vote was taken, the bill passed through the House of Lords with a majority of sixty-three and by royal assent became law on February 6, 1918. The bill also entitled university-trained women with degrees to vote as university electors, and a special amendment was added to give voting rights to women at Oxford and Cambridge (the only universities not admitting women to degrees), provided they fulfilled certain qualifications. In March 1918, the university’s vice-chancellor issued the following notice: All women who have been admitted to and passed the “final examination” and kept the period of residence necessary for a man to ­obtain a degree at a University, are entitled, provided they have attained the age of 30 years, to be registered as Parliamentary Electors for the University. In other words, qualified women could now vote for parliamentary candidates to represent a university that refused to offer them membership. As a Som­erville woman commented: “So anomalous was this position that even the most ancient and conservative of universities could not but recognize it.”11 The anomaly became even more apparent in November 1918, when the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was passed, which gave women the right to vie for seats in the House of Commons. Rita McWilliams Tullberg, author of Women at Cambridge, succinctly summed up the problem: “it was possible for a woman educated at the old universities to put MP after her name, though not MA.” Now that women could vote, it made no sense to exclude them from the government of the university. “To do so would have been to put more faith in the undereducated masses than in their own highly trained women.”12 Cambridge managed to live with this conundrum for twenty more years. Oxford did not.

Degrees for Women: Round Three In truth, however, the issue of degrees for women had not been entirely dormant in Oxford during the war. On June 25, 1917, the Hebdomadal Council gave provisional approval to the women’s statute initiated by John

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Stocks in 1913. He had moved for a committee of Council to bring before Congregation the question of admitting women to degrees, as laid out in Lord Curzon’s 1909 memorandum. Because of the war, however, Council could take it no further at that time. Annie Rogers, who was in a position to know, maintained that this period of official inactivity had not been wasted. She claimed that the situation had “reached the stage when careful and detailed discussion among friends was of the greatest value in bringing about what proved to be an agreed measure. There was full time for it, which is not always the way with Council business.”13 During the fall term of 1918, when it looked as if the war would soon be over, the Hebdomadal Council became more active. Members who wanted to proceed with the women’s statute began to have concerns about whether the university actually had the power to admit women to matriculation and degrees. They decided to consult a higher authority and submitted their case to the university counsel in March 1919. In October, counsel delivered its opinion that there seemed to be no reason why the university could not “admit to membership anyone who is able to receive that which it is the object of the university to give, namely teaching.”14 Because there was some lingering doubt about the scope of the university’s power, however, counsel recommended that parliamentary sanction be obtained for the proposed changes. Taking this advice to heart, the Hebdomadal Council gave notice that it would request the university MPs to introduce legislation in Parliament to ensure that Oxford could indeed matriculate women and award them degrees. In a fortunate bit of timing, the MPs never had to propose the legislation. Parliament passed the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act in November 1919, which stated: A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation. A special amendment dealt specifically with university women, as reported in the Times: “Nothing in the Statutes or Charter of any university shall preclude the authorities from making provision for the admission of women to membership or to any degree, or privilege.”15 King George V gave his assent to the act on December 24, 1919. Oxford responded quickly in light of this new parliamentary act. The Oxford University Gazette announced a preamble to a statute on November 26, 1919, that was much bolder than any prewar proposals. It not only permitted women to matriculate and take all degrees except those in divinity but it also qualified them for membership in Convocation and Congregation, on university boards and committees, and on the Hebdo-



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madal Council. In addition, it declared women eligible for appointments to faculties and as professors, lecturers, and examiners. Two members of Somerville Council, W. M. Geldart, professor of English law, and A. D. Lindsay, fellow of Balliol, moved the preamble to the statute in Congregation on February 17, 1920. Referring to a time twenty-four years earlier when women were patronizingly described as guests of the university, Professor Geldart remarked: “It was now time they should become full members of the family.” Lindsay emphasized that the statute proposed no new principle but only acknowledged “an experiment which had been tried and proved successful.”16 When the vote came, no one opposed, and the statute passed its first hurdle. The final version of the statute would now come before Congregation and Convocation in May. That the preamble passed without opposition, however, did not mean it met with universal approval. Two fellows of Exeter objected to the lib­ er­ality of the women’s statute, stating that they were opposed to women sharing in the government of the university and examining male candidates for degrees. In an attempt to water down the statute, they proposed two amendments at an assembly of Congregation in March 1920 that would exclude women from membership on university boards and committees, and prohibit women from acting as university examiners. The ensuing debate was reportedly uninspired, and members rejected the first amendment by 108 votes to 43 and the second by 107 votes to 35. Few other objections to the statute surfaced after these amendments were voted down, and it passed unopposed in Congregation on May 4, 1920, and in Convocation on May 11. In November 1919, the Oxford Magazine had remarked about the ­proposed women’s statute: “It is pleasing, but perhaps presumptuous, to hope that the privileges may be granted with the same grace with which their prolonged refusal has been endured.” Oxford indeed acted with grace, and the peaceful victory took many women’s supporters by surprise. Those who witnessed the wrangling in 1896 when a vote of 215 to 140 ­denied women degrees had not anticipated that no opposing votes would be cast for a more generous proposal in 1920. If Annie Rogers was accurate in maintaining that many Oxford men hated the statute, they had largely kept quiet, and women were tactful about their victory, as Rogers notes: We were in the wilderness—not with very great murmuring and discontent—for more than forty years, but when we entered the promised land we came in peacefully, not with shouts and blowing of rams’ horns. Women now had an assured place in the university. Except for a few prohibitions (women could not qualify for degrees in divinity or become vice-chancellors or proctors), they were subject to the same requirements as men in regard to fees, residence, and qualifications for degrees and also

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shared with them all the rights and privileges that Oxford could bestow. Annie Rogers believed that several events conspired to bring about the university’s change of heart. For one thing, she felt, the war had banished many long-held prejudices against women and supported her view with a quote from a former opponent of degrees: “The women have shown more capacity than we gave them credit for; well, this war makes one see things in a different light.”17 Another convert had once maintained that women were unfit to be members of the university because they were too ignorant of the world’s wickedness. After the war, however, he believed that women were less naïve, and he proved willing to reconsider his position. Subsequent events revealed Miss Rogers to be overly optimistic about changed attitudes toward women, but when praise and gratitude were heaped on them at war’s end, it is not hard to understand her hopeful attitude. Miss Rogers also credited the serious discussions about degrees that went on privately in Oxford during the war years with having a positive effect, as we have seen. The groundwork had been laid in a quiet and thoughtful manner, without the rancorous public debate that often attended other issues concerning women at Oxford. Finally, Miss Rogers believed that Oxford had responded to the national changes in 1918 and 1919 that affected the status of women, which many felt strengthened their claims to obtain degrees. Vera Brittain concurred, saying that these changes “spared the university authorities any disturbing suspicion that their revolutionary behaviour was, in fact, revolutionary.”18 Miss Rogers did not address another possible reason why degrees for women passed easily through the university at this time. Oxford men had just expended a considerable amount of their combative energies on whether to abolish compulsory Greek for responsions. When such a statute was proposed in the spring of 1919, a heated battle followed until Convocation finally approved it on March 2, 1920, by a vote of 434 to 359. The number of letters and articles that filled the pages of the Times all through 1919 and the first six months of 1920 indicate how strongly university men felt about the issue, pro and con—more than a hundred. By contrast, during the same eighteen months fewer than fifteen dealt with the women’s statute. One might conclude that men at Oxford had the heart and energy for only one big conflict at a time or that they shrewdly knew how to choose their battles. Many may have sensed that awarding degrees to women was inevitable and, compared to whether Greek should be compulsory, no longer worth making a fuss over. Certainly, the abolition of Greek for responsions was a boon to women, most of whom had little or no classical training. It also defused the argument put forth by opponents of higher education for women that, because so many women were ignorant of Greek and had been allowed exemptions from the responsions requirement, they were not worthy to be members of the university. After March 1920, this argument carried no force.



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The Situation in Cambridge In light of these suppositions, it is interesting to note how differently Cambridge reacted when the same issue arose there. Cambridge had abolished compulsory Greek as a condition for degrees in 1918, to the delight of those favorable to degrees for women. With this hurdle gone, they felt that Cambridge women were in a strong position to ask for admittance to the university. Consequently, a petition brought forward in April 1918 called on resident and nonresident members of the Cambridge Senate (similar to Oxford’s Convocation) to grant full membership to women. After months of appointing committees and discussing various resolutions, the Senate met on December 8, 1920, and rejected full membership by a vote of 904 to 712. A year later, the Senate voted to award titular degrees to women that carried no real status, and Cambridge women had to wait until 1948 before membership and degrees were conferred on them. Rita McWilliams Tullberg believed that timing played an important part in the university’s rejection. At Oxford, a proposal to admit women to degrees was already in place before the war, and in the reforming atmosphere that swept over Britain just after the armistice, supporters were able to carry it through. In light of the privileges extended to women by Parliament, Oxford opponents of degrees for women may have felt that further protest was futile and that the government might eventually compel them to accept women. At Cambridge, no prewar reforms favorable to women had been discussed, and during the long period that the university considered the membership issue after it was raised in 1918, the feeling that the country owed women any special gratitude for their war service waned. When the war ended and the men came home, women were expected to step down from the jobs they had taken over, and many gradually did so. Others who proved less willing to surrender the gains they felt they had made during the war years were widely criticized as unpatriotic and accused of being parasites. When the economic situation in Britain worsened after a brief postwar boom in 1919, massive unemployment resulted. Women trying to hold on to jobs outside their traditional spheres came in for further condemnation. In such an atmosphere, those at Cambridge who wanted to play on fears that women were pushy and would drastically alter the university for their own benefit if admitted to membership found sympathetic listeners. Despite possible explanations about why Oxford chose to open doors to women and Cambridge to close theirs, the events in Cambridge remained puzzling to many. As Tullberg noted: “The enigma then was not the step forward that Oxford made, but the frantic efforts Cambridge was making to stand still or even to walk backwards.”19

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Creating Women Undergraduates While at Cambridge women watched events unfold with dismay, Oxford women looked forward to the autumn term of 1920 when they would be formally matriculated and admitted to degrees. As members of the university, women would wear caps and gowns to lectures, examinations, and academic functions and in any university institution where males wore academic dress. Consequently, a proper costume had to be devised before any ceremonies were held, and the subject caused some friction between the women principals and university authorities. The Delegacy for Women Students was charged with determining academic dress for women, subject to the approval of the vice-chancellor and proctors. When the delegacy consulted the principals of the women’s colleges, all parties agreed that women should wear the same commoner’s (short) and scholar’s (long) gowns as men.20 Controversy arose, however, over the shape of women’s caps. Ten styles were submitted to the delegacy, and several women students, some with long hair and some with short, were asked to model the caps before the selected delegates, principals, vice-chancellor, and proctors. The principals strongly favored the traditional mortarboard, but a number of the men, particularly the proctors, disliked it on women. They preferred a soft, square cap that looked vaguely medieval, and they got their way. Annie Rogers approved of it, in part because it could be adjusted to sit nicely on different hairstyles, but the principals were less pleased. Pauline Adams claimed that Miss Penrose, “such a stickler for correctness” in most things, tried to avoid wearing hers whenever possible.21 In a photograph of Miss Penrose and Gilbert Murray taken on October 14, 1920, the historic day that women were first granted degrees, Dr. Murray stands in his robe and mortarboard while Emily Penrose appears in her academic gown with cap in hand. Under their caps and gowns, men were required to dress in subfusc (from the Latin suffucus, dark brown)—dark suits and shoes, white shirts, white collars, and white ties. For women, the vice-chancellor and proctors defined subfusc as dark coats and skirts, black shoes and stockings, white blouses, and black ties. Senior women members were expected to wear the same costume as students at academic functions, but many thought it more suitable for schoolgirls. Bertha Johnson flatly refused to wear a white blouse, saying she had never done so, and attended the first degree ceremony in a high-necked black dress. No one dared reprove her. Most women students were initially thrilled by the novelty of wearing academic dress. It also turned out to be practical, according to a St. Hilda’s student: It is really an advantage when cycling down the High in pouring rain or in a high wind, to be wearing a cap that is quite unperturbed by



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any such things. So long as one gets it on straight to begin with, it is perfectly happy all the time! The people who flow gracefully around in scholars’ gowns certainly look very imposing and dignified and incidentally, a scholar’s gown is handy as a raincoat.22 Over time, they grew more blasé about their academic dress, and Anne Fremantle (LMH 1927) recalled that those who wore scholar’s gowns preferred them to be as shabby as possible. Using a trick that many women students employed, she found that she could easily obtain the desired shabby effect by holding her gown in front of the fire to make it draw better.23 Students from each of the women’s colleges also began to wear their caps in distinctly different ways. Audrey Groser, who entered St. Hilda’s in 1929, described how one could identify a woman’s college merely by they way she wore her cap. A Somervillian wore hers with one corner pulled down over her nose, while a St. Hilda’s girl adopted the halo look with the hat toward the back of the head. At LMH and St. Hugh’s, women adjusted their caps so that they angled to the left or to the right, but Audrey could no longer recall which direction signified which college.24 She did not mention the style adopted by Home-Students, but Dorothy Lane Poole, a classics tutor, drilled her Home-Students in the intricacies of academic dress and insisted that they wear their caps straight across their foreheads.25 Another issue that confronted the university before the October cere­ monies concerned women who had attended Oxford in the past, taken examinations, and might now want a degree retroactively as reward for the work they had done. Those who had been able to take the full degree course under the same conditions as male undergraduates, regardless of how long ago it had been, were deemed eligible for degrees without any further ado, and more Somervillians qualified immediately for degrees than students from any of the other women’s colleges. That they did so was a tribute to Miss Penrose’s strict requirements, her faith that degrees would eventually be awarded, and her conviction that women needed to be prepared for them. For many others, however, the irregularities under which they had been allowed or constrained to study at Oxford presented problems. Some women had completed a course of study but taken no final examinations, and others had taken only the special women’s exams until examination barriers fell. Some had taken no intermediate exams before sitting for finals, but these intermediate exams had not always been available to women. Finally, some women had not kept the residence requirements that were supposedly necessary for degrees. In a flurry of decrees, the university tried to make the best of the situation by offering all the women subject to irregularities a chance to matriculate if they paid a fee of five pounds and within six years took the examinations they had skipped or from which they had been barred. Many women took advantage of the offer—for example, 1,159 matriculated in 1920–1921, although

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only about 550 women students were actually in residence—and it was not uncommon to see older women and even college tutors sitting for preliminary examinations to qualify for degrees. Joan Evans, a former St. Hugh’s student and now librarian there, took one of those examinations alongside her mother, who had attended Somerville in 1888. It was probably inconvenient for many women to put their lives on hold while they studied and sat for exams, but it is a measure of how much they valued degrees that such a large number took the trouble to do so. Opinions were mixed on whether the university had acted generously in regard to former students. Bertha Johnson was not alone in feeling resentment that women, many of whom had been distinguished students, should have to subject themselves to examinations that had once been closed to them. Of course, she had never been in favor of the strict degree course, even when women were permitted to take all examinations, and indignation was probably a more comfortable emotion now than regret at her shortsightedness. Annie Rogers publicly declared that the university had indeed been generous, but she could not resist mentioning that it did so with one eye on filling its coffers.26 The fees that former students paid to matriculate and take degrees amounted to thousands of extra pounds for Oxford over the next few years. There was no quibbling over one decree that came from Convocation. The university bestowed honorary MAs on all the women principals, even though they were technically ineligible for degrees. Neither Miss Penrose nor Miss Jourdain had taken intermediate examinations before their finals, and Winifred Moberly, the new principal of St. Hilda’s, had not gone beyond her classical moderations examination while a student at LMH (1894). Mrs. Johnson and Miss Jex-Blake had never even attended university. Although the new statute required that all women heads of colleges should have graduated from a university or qualified for degrees from Oxford or Cambridge, Oxford chose to overlook the requirement in this instance. The MA was conferred with no strings attached. The heads were now spared the awkwardness of inferior academic standing within their own institutions, and everyone appreciated the university’s tactful gesture.

Historic Ceremonies After students were admitted to a college or hall, Oxford required that they be formally matriculated in the university, a process that largely involved being presented to the vice-chancellor, hearing a few words in Latin, and signing the university register. The first such ceremony for women took place on October 7, 1920, in the Divinity Schools, when 129 women were matriculated. LMH students, as members of the most senior college, registered first. Isobel Matthew (1918) recalled that she was handed a pen to sign the big book, looked at the blank page in front of her, and sud-



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denly realized that she would be the first registered woman member of the university. She remembered the ceremony as bewildering, claiming that students had received no instructions on how to conduct themselves, but her principal, Miss Jex-Blake, got them through it. Afterward, outside in the quadrangle, the normally reserved Miss Jex-Blake declared: “This is the proudest moment of my life, and you are historic characters—the first women ever matriculated in the leading university of the world.”27 More historic in most people’s eyes was October 14, 1920, the day Oxford first awarded degrees to women. Although about four hundred women qualified for degrees, it was necessary to limit the number presented at any one time. All eligible women would eventually be admitted at degree days throughout the term, but on this occasion, fifty women selected from all the women’s colleges assembled at the Sheldonian Theatre, where degrees were normally awarded. The vice-chancellor presided over the ceremony, by all accounts a dignified and impressive one. Before the male and female candidates were presented for degrees, the five women principals were formally honored by the conferment of MAs. When they walked slowly into the Sheldonian in their caps and gowns, Mrs. Johnson leading the way, the audience burst into spontaneous applause. The vicechancellor rose to receive them, and they bowed to him before taking the special seats assigned to them. All the male candidates for degrees followed (an order of precedence that irritated Annie Rogers) before the fifty women came forward. Amid another round of applause, they stood before the vice-chancellor as the first women to receive degrees from the University of Oxford. They symbolized a victory that had been won, according to one writer, by “courtesy, patience and merit alone.”28

First Graduates Among those making history that day were women who had attended Oxford as long ago as the 1890s, standing beside those who had only recently completed their college careers. Some in the first group were already secondary schoolmistresses, academics, writers, public servants, scientists, and physicians, and many had distinguished careers. As might be expected, a number of the first graduates worked in education, particularly on the secondary level, although several had secured university positions. Agnes Wilde (LMH 1896) had been the first ­classics tutor at LMH and served for nine years before her marriage in 1910. ­Helena Deneke (St. Hugh’s 1904) began her academic career at St. Hugh’s but mi­grated to LMH in 1913, where she taught German for twenty-five years. Joan Evans (St. Hugh’s 1914), librarian at St. Hugh’s, was awarded the BLitt, a research degree, for her thesis on medieval jewelry. Former Home-Students Dorothy Lane Poole (1903) and Ivy Williams (1896) had just been appointed tutors for their society in classics and jurisprudence, respectively.

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In 1922, Ivy Williams would have the distinction of becoming the first woman called to the English bar after women were admitted in 1920. When she published her first major book in 1923, The Sources of Law in the Swiss Civil Code, Oxford took the unprecedented step of awarding her the DCL (Doctor of Civil Law), the first woman to be so honored. Dr. Williams quietly but persistently worked to open up opportunities for women in the legal profession and, after she retired, endowed two Oxford law scholarships, one of which was stipulated for women only. Dorothy Sayers (1912) stood with fellow Somervillians Muriel Jaeger (1912) and Constance Savery (1917) to receive her degree. All three would become published authors. Dorothy Broster (St. Hilda’s 1896) had already made a name for herself as a historical novelist by the time she received her BA and MA simultaneously. Muriel St. Clare Byrne (Somerville 1914) was just beginning her long career as writer and lecturer when she stood in the Sheldonian to get her BA. Two women in this first group devoted a good portion of their lives to serving others. Leah L’Estrange Malone (Somerville 1904) was first elected to the London County Council in 1934 and served as alderman from 1937 until her death in 1950. Passionately interested in the arts as well as politics, she was active on the boards of major theatre and dance companies in London. Elizabeth Mitchell (LMH 1901) became deeply interested in town planning and urban development in her native Scotland and was elected to the town council in Lanarkshire. She also helped found the Scottish branch of the Town and Country Planning Association, and in more than twenty years of voluntary service to this organization, she was a powerful influence. Rose Graham (Somerville 1894) had already done notable work in archaeology and history by 1920. Mary W. Porter was the current holder of the Lady Carlisle Research Fellowship at Somerville and received the BSc degree for research she undertook after joining the Society of HomeStudents in 1916. Two graduates went on to take medical degrees and make significant contributions to the well-being of children. Doris Odlum (St. Hilda’s 1909) was an early specialist in mental health, and Cicely Williams (Somerville 1917) distinguished herself as an international expert in pediatrics. It was a proud moment for the women graduates who had waited a long time to obtain degrees, as well as for all the men and women who had worked so hard to see this day come to pass. Eleanor Lodge summarized the feelings of many: “Only those who have lived by the university but not of it, who have done university work but without being university members, can fully appreciate the vast difference it makes to be now at last part of the great institution, which has been so long the home of students and scholars.”29

St. Hilda’s students in caps and gowns at matriculation, 1921.

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St. Hilda’s College eight with their rowing coach, Mr. William Best, 1921.

(Opposite page) Somerville students dining in hall, 1930s.

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A.M.A.H. (Annie) Rogers in academic dress, 1921.

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Somerville students rehearsing a play, 1932.

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Somerville students working in the college library with a coal fire, 1932.

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Group photograph of St. Hilda’s students and their escorts at the St. Hilda’s College ball, 1955.

(Opposite page) Lady Margaret Hall students digging a victory garden on college grounds during wartime, 1940s. St. Anne’s students in front of Hartland House at the opening of its second phase, May 28, 1952.

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Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at the opening of the new dining hall at St. Anne’s College, November 4, 1960.

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I

n the 1920s and 1930s the women’s societies, despite a chronic   shortage of money, not only expanded to accommodate the growing   number of applicants but did so during significant administrative changes.

Money Woes The interwar years were ones of financial hardship for the Oxford women’s societies. They had always been poor, without endowments or wellheeled supporters, but student fees and no-frills budgets had enabled them to just keep afloat. During the postwar inflation that hit Britain, however, the cost of living rose sharply, and even the comparatively wealthy men’s colleges felt the pinch. The four residential women’s colleges, which had tried to keep prewar fees around £100 per year, were forced to raise them to £150 per year. (Among the men’s colleges, expenses varied widely, depending on the college, but as a general rule, a male undergraduate could expect to pay around £250 per year for his education.) Although the increase did not keep pace with inflation, the women’s colleges were reluctant to raise fees any further because middle-class and poorer students would then find an Oxford education prohibitively expensive. Although a woman’s right to higher education was now more accepted than in the past, many families still set a limit on what they were prepared to pay to educate their daughters. There were other problems. More and more women sought places at all the Oxford women’s colleges after the war, and the university’s appeal was only enhanced with the admission of women to degrees. To make room for increasing numbers of students, all the colleges embarked on expensive building projects in the ten years after 1919, thus incurring more debt. Salaries for tutors were another cause for concern. Tutors received no constant rate of pay but depended on fees for hours taught and lectures given, a sum that could vary from term to term. Tutors often took on as many pupils as possible just to earn a modest income, but their research and

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sometimes their health suffered. Also, they had no pension plans except at Somerville, which instituted a pension scheme in 1917. St. Hilda’s, Somerville, and the Society of Home-Students got a welcome infusion of cash in 1919 from the Cassel Trust (St. Hugh’s and LMH were not eligible because of their religious affiliation). Sir Ernest Cassel, a wealthy British financier and philanthropist, created an educational trust in 1919 of about £500,000 to fund a variety of his interests, one of which was the higher education of women. The grants awarded to the Oxford colleges ran for five years; St. Hilda’s received £750 per year, Somerville £1,250, and the Home-Students £500. At the end of the five-year period, each society received a lump sum in lieu of further annual grants. Although the three women’s societies gratefully accepted the money, it by no means fully met their urgent need for funds. When it became clear in 1919 that another royal commission would be appointed to investigate the financial resources and government of both Oxford and Cambridge, all the Oxford women principals outlined their financial position in a joint report for the commission. They particularly stressed the need for increased stipends and pensions to the administrative and teaching staffs and for financial help to maintain buildings, promote research, develop libraries, and extend student accommodations. At the end of two-and-a-half years, the commission published its recommendations on March 24, 1922, including specific proposals for the women’s colleges. Noting that their financial position was particularly unsatisfactory, commissioners suggested that the government give Oxford and Cambridge each an annual grant of £4,000 for the next ten years to be distributed to the women’s colleges at the university’s discretion. Commissioners made the grant subject to several conditions: (1) that the colleges would make every effort in the next ten years to become self-supporting, (2) that out of each college’s share, one-half would be set aside for salaries and pensions, (3) that each college would establish a pension plan, and (4) that each college should settle its debts within a period fixed by the Women’s Property Committee at Oxford and a corresponding board to be created at Cambridge. The women’s colleges agreed to the conditions of the grant, but Winifred Moberly, principal of St. Hilda’s, expressed doubts that they could become self-sufficient in ten years. In a letter to the Times on March 27, 1922, she wrote that each principal was under great strain to reduce debts—and she estimated that the combined debt of the four women’s colleges exceeded £60,000—but that all attempts to secure private benefactions had met with “pitifully small success.” In practice, Oxford administered the grant so that each of the four women’s colleges, but not the Society of Home-Students, received £1,000 per year. The society’s exclusion was explained by the fact that it had no administrative or residential buildings to keep up and that, as a university delegacy, it would be provided for out of a general government



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grant. The university did award it about £200 per year, which largely went toward administrative salaries and pensions. Before the commission completed its work in 1922, the women’s colleges at Oxford were already trying to become more self-supporting by ­cooperating to issue a national appeal for money. The Oxford Women’s College Fund was launched on January 17, 1921, by a letter to the Times from Lord Curzon, the five principals, and other interested parties. In terms similar to those presented by the principals to the royal commission, Curzon pointed out how badly the women’s colleges needed money. He made a plea for donations, with the gifts to be apportioned equally among the five societies or specified for a particular college. (The Society of Home-Students eventually withdrew from the joint appeal because of its delegacy status but wanted the public to know that contributions would still be gladly received.) At this stage, the colleges sought no specific total, but eventually the appeal committee set a goal of £185,000, of which £70,000 would go toward paying off existing debts. A few months after the appeal was broadcast, Queen Mary showed her support by contributing £500 (she had been given an honorary degree at Oxford only the week before). Unfortunately, few followed her lead. The organizers of the appeal probably knew as well as anyone that it was not a particularly good time to ask for money—the British were trying to cope with massive unemployment and rising inflation. They also still had to fight the old battle about whether the higher education of women was a worthwhile cause. One wealthy lady who wrote to the mayor of London, a supporter of the appeal, maintained that women had no right to be in Oxford and considered it humiliating that her son had to attend lectures by women dons.1 Grace Hadow, sitting in on a meeting in support of the fund in November 1922, reported that even some among that group believed that a university education would be wasted on women who married. Hadow could not let that opinion go unchallenged; she responded that uneducated wives might create more unhappy marriages than educated ones. “A Dora Copperfield at 17, biting the end of her pencil and making a muddle of her household accounts, might be rather charming and appealing. At 27 years of age she was apt to be irritating, and at 37 might think herself lucky if she had not driven her husband to drink.”2 The appeal fund committee gamely attempted to keep the issue before the public in periodic notices to newspapers, but money only trickled in, although there was a brief period of optimism in May 1923. The secretary of the appeal fund reported that a female donor would contribute £100 if ninety-nine other women matched her gift; the secretary pleaded that such a generous offer not be made in vain. Queen Mary promptly sent in her share, and by August, Curzon was delighted to be able to announce that the fund had received £10,000. He added, however, that he still hoped the £185,000 goal would be reached in order to free the women’s colleges

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from debt and provide for endowments. He hoped in vain. One of the organizers outlined the problem: “As long as one appeals to old students and friends of the Colleges one is met with great sympathy, but the moment I mention the Appeal Fund to the outside world, I am generally faced with absolute indifference.”3 Sadly, those with the most sympathy usually had the least money. The joint appeal finally closed down in 1925, having raised only about a quarter of the goal. Clearly, the women’s societies would not see their money woes alleviated in the near future. They would continue to exist with skimpy budgets, underpaid staffs, and the devoted efforts of volunteers, just as they always had.

Demise of the AEW and Delegacy for Women Students Once women became members of the university, the Association for promoting the Education of Women no longer had a role to play. At its last annual meeting, November 20, 1920, members formally voted for its dissolution. Its authority had in fact been undermined when the university set up the Dele­gacy for Women Students in 1910, but to that point the AEW had played a crucial role in organizing and unifying women’s education in Oxford. The delegacy, which now also had no duties that could not be more ­appropriately administered by some other body, was abolished a few months after the AEW. With its demise, the Delegacy for Home-Students was created to oversee the Home-Students, a unique society that had no counter­part in any other university. Those who sat on the delegacy were the vice-chancellor, an ex officio member, the proctors, the principal, the controller of lodgings, six members appointed by various university authorities, and four members elected by the delegates themselves. Tutors had no representation. The university granted a small stipend for the principal’s salary and transferred the responsibility for approving houses of residence to its own Delegacy of Lodgings. The university had also recently purchased Holywell House in Jowett Walk (near Longwall Street) with the windfall from fees paid by the large number of women aiming for degrees and offered a portion of the building to the Home-Students—they would share Holywell House with the School of Geography. The offer came at a particularly good time, for the society needed administrative offices now that the AEW and Delegacy for Women Students were dissolved and no longer had rooms in the Clarendon Building. Students also needed a new meeting place, for the little house in Ship Street was inadequate for a society whose members now numbered over 150. In addition, Holywell House solved the problem of what to do with the Nettleship Library, which had been under the control of the AEW and housed alongside its office. This intercollegiate women’s library had been founded in 1895 as



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the result of a gift and now contained more than eight thousand volumes. The university, which had assumed responsibility for the library, permitted its removal to the new property, where it was accommodated in two of the best rooms. The Home-Students greatly benefited from this arrangement. The library was adjacent to their common room, and they had immediate access to it. The Society of Home-Students, through these various means, now seemed to have a firmly established position within the university, a circumstance that pleased Bertha Johnson, although she was no longer directly involved. Shortly after the degree ceremony on October 14, 1920, Mrs. Johnson announced that she intended to retire but would stay until the end of spring term, 1921, so that she could leave the society’s affairs in order for the new head. Bertha Johnson had served as principal for more than twenty-five years, and her reign was described as “a benevolent autocracy, of a vivid and somewhat unconventional type.”4 Working primarily out of her home, she interviewed every applicant, arranged for their lodgings, and assigned them to the appropriate tutors. The job necessarily involved an enormous amount of correspondence, and she carried out all this business with only one assistant and no stipend (by her own choice), while running a home and raising a family. Now that the society had grown so large, it was no longer feasible or desirable to transact business on the ama­teur basis that Mrs. Johnson preferred. Still, it was almost impossible for people to imagine the Home-Students without her, and on her retirement, she received many warm tributes for her devoted service. The father of two Home-Students sent her a letter in which he tried to express what she had meant to parents: “If I may say so, what we have valued chiefly has been the touch of motherliness which has won you so deservedly the gratitude and affection of the students.”5 Over the years, Mrs. Johnson had clearly inspired respect and affection, but she had attracted criticism as well. Some thought she often stood in the way of progress for women in the university, and her conservative outlook had frequently exasperated Annie Rogers, for one. At the moment of her stepping down, however, almost everyone could acknowledge that without her partisan leadership over the past forty years, the Home­Students would probably not have survived, much less thrived.

New Developments for Home-Students Just as LMH had not wanted too radical a change when selecting someone to replace Elizabeth Wordsworth in 1909, the Society of Home-Students acted cautiously in searching for a new principal. The governing body wanted a conservative reformer, someone who could help the society measure up to collegiate status but who would respect the family atmosphere cultivated by her predecessor. They offered the position to Christine Bur-

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rows, the former principal of St. Hilda’s, who conveniently still lived in Oxford and seemed to be a good candidate. She had been intimately involved with women’s education in Oxford, possessed the tact and patience necessary to work effectively in the university environment, and could be relied on not to ride roughshod over the ideals and traditions Mrs. Johnson had so lovingly built up. When approached, Miss Burrows proved willing to accept the principalship, influenced by its being a nonresidential post. She could thus continue to live with and care for her mother, who was in poor health. One of Miss Burrows’s first tasks was to tighten up the society’s admissions policy. Mrs. Johnson had largely relied on instinct when deciding whether a prospective student was suitable, and although her judgment often proved sound, the society needed a more formal policy now that women were part of the university. An entrance examination was imposed on Home-Students for the first time in 1921, and the 1922 annual report read: The standard of the entrance examination which is intended to ascertain whether the candidates are fitted to read for Honours or a Diploma, has been raised. The only women admitted to read for a purely Pass Course are those whose homes are in Oxford, or who are professionally employed there.6 The last sentence was designed to appease those who thought the Home-Students should still accommodate nontraditional students, the group for which the society had been created. As St. Anne’s historian ­Marjorie Reeves remarked: “In any university situation the necessity of maintaining rigorous academic standards always remains in tension with the desire for flexibility in serving the needs of the slightly off-beat. Throughout its history the Society/College has sought in differing circumstances to resolve this tension justly.”7 (The Society of Home-Students would officially change its name to St. Anne’s Society in 1942 and then to St. Anne’s College in 1952.) The new principal also wanted to strengthen the position of her tutorial staff, which was relatively new compared to those at the other Oxford women’s colleges. Not until 1913 did the society stop relying solely on tutors from the AEW and appoint tutors of its own. In the eight years before Miss Burrows took over as principal, the society had acquired a respectable, even distinguished, staff of tutors. C. V. Butler and Ivy Williams were economics tutor and law tutor, respectively. Margaret L. Lee (St. Hugh’s 1890) cofounded the Wychwood School, a well-regarded and progressive school for girls in North Oxford, and taught there in addition to serving as English tutor to Home-Students. Mary Leys (Somerville 1911) came as history tutor in 1919 and had a long academic career, still publishing historical



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works as late as the 1950s. Dorothy Lane Poole, appointed classics tutor in 1920, was demanding and assertive; she terrified most students until they learned that behind her formidable presence lay a brilliant teacher who genuinely had their best interests at heart. When she died in 1947, the March 21 London Times called her a “character,” adding that she was “loved and mourned by an immense circle of undergraduates and graduates.” The tutors, however, had little corporate spirit. Mrs. Johnson had not devoted much energy to promoting unity among the staff, which was admittedly more difficult than in the other women’s societies, where tutors usually resided in college. Miss Burrows recognized the need for more cohesion and instituted regular tutors’ meetings in which information and concerns could be shared. In 1926, tutors were finally allowed to elect four of their number to serve on the Delegacy for Home-Students, and their role became more precisely defined. In addition, Miss Burrows had the unenviable job of maintaining control over her dispersed band of students, which by 1926 numbered around 220. Most lived in university-approved private houses and hostels under the care of hostesses (a designation coined by Miss Burrows for the women who took in Home-Students), and the principal took it upon herself to visit each of the sixty hostesses before she took office. Thereafter, she interviewed any prospective hostess, inspected the home, and decided whether to recommend it for approval to the Controller of Lodgings. Miss Burrows also held occasional meetings at which all the hostesses gathered to discuss problems and to hear about university regulations and their responsibility for upholding them. When Christine Burrows retired in 1929, Ruth Butler, the vice­principal, described her as “exactly the pilot that the ship needed on this part of her voyage—a voyage through somewhat difficult straits to a wider sea.” She added that “Miss Burrows had guided us into ways that were more collegiate, but she had never broken with tradition.” Marjorie Reeves saw the principal’s tenure as “the essential link between the first phase of improvisation and informality and the developing institutionalism of the next two principalships.”8 To succeed Miss Burrows, the Home-Student delegates turned to Grace Hadow, a woman of wide-ranging interests in adult education and social work, who was active on numerous county and national committees and much in demand as a public speaker. She also had a proven talent for administration (see Chapter 11). The society would need her administrative skill during the next decade, for it was to undergo some significant changes. Just before Miss Burrows stepped down, the governing body learned that an anonymous donor wished to give a large but unspecified amount of money to the society in order to give Home-Students “a more complete corporate life.”9 This promised benefaction caused both excitement and anxiety. A gift of money would, of course, always be welcome

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in a society where funds were scarce, but who was the donor and when would the precise amount be known? What would acceptance entail? In particular, some viewed the words “complete corporate life” with alarm. Did the donor want the Society of Home-Students to become a residential college, and was the society prepared to alter its character to such an extent? Over the next few years, most concerns about the benefaction were alleviated as more information became known. Mrs. Amy Hartland was subsequently revealed to be the donor; regretting her own lack of a university education, she wanted to use her money to benefit women students.10 Some Oxford acquaintances had steered her in the direction of the HomeStudents. Discussions with authorities from the society persuaded her to fund buildings for administrative and educational purposes, not residential ones, thus preserving a distinctive feature of Home-Student life. In 1929, Mrs. Hartland established a trust (but still did not offer specific figures to the delegates) so that interest could accumulate until the society found a suitable building site. By the time the trust was set up, Grace Hadow had come on board, inheriting both the promise of a large windfall and the more immediate headache of entering into complex negotiations to secure property while over the next couple of years trying to placate an increasingly impatient Mrs. Hartland. Finally in 1932, a desirable piece of land between the Banbury and Woodstock Roads came onto the market, and the trust administrators snapped it up. They then hired an architect to design buildings that would eventually house a library, an assembly hall, common rooms, offices, and tutors’ rooms to be finished in stages, as funds permitted. Now the society had to decide which portion of the building scheme it needed most urgently, a decision made easier by another timely gift. In 1932, Mrs. Florence Musgrave bequeathed the society the remaining lease of thirty-three years on her large house and garden at 1 South Parks Road in Oxford. Owing to numerous legal tangles—more headaches for Grace Hadow—the house was not ready for occupancy until 1936, but it then served as the administrative, tutorial, and social center of the society for the next sixteen years. Meanwhile, Home-Student delegates determined that the first building on their new property should be a library, which, despite precarious finances and the still vague generosity of Mrs. Hartland, was completed by the Christmas vacation of 1937. When the Home-Students returned to Oxford for Hilary term, they frequented the library with such assiduity that Miss Hadow half-humorously wrote to the architect: “I am really rather horrified to find that the new library is attracting people so much that even on fine sunny afternoons it is full of young women industriously reading.”11 The Society of Home-Students was finally putting down visible roots in Oxford and could foresee growth on the horizon. The society planned no



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residential buildings for students, in keeping with the Home-Student tradition, but in 1934, some undergraduates began agitating for a change of name. They argued that their title was misleading, as only a small number of students lived in their own homes. Many also felt that people outside the university misunderstood the term “Home-Students,” and members of the society sometimes had difficulty persuading prospective employers that their degrees were as good as those earned by students at the other Oxford women’s colleges. This issue had been raised at various times before 1934, but no one ever took the matter very far for fear of offending Mrs. Johnson, who always opposed any suggestion of a name change. But Mrs. Johnson had died in 1927, and current students no longer felt they were being disrespectful to her by suggesting that “Home-Students” did not accurately reflect their current status in Oxford (although they did not have an alternate name to propose). Christine Burrows favored a new title, believing that “Home-Students” meant nothing to outsiders. The delegates agreed to consult old members about the possibility of changing the society’s name and sent out a circular inviting written opinions. At the same time, Ruth Butler, staunch upholder of the Johnson legacy, distributed her own circular to old members in which she argued against a name change, largely because it signified a break with tradition. She and her supporters prevailed, and the proposal was shelved for the immediate future. The Home-Students would keep their unique name and their unique character—until war made their old way of life impossible.

Lynda Grier at LMH In January 1921, in her letter of resignation as principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Miss Jex-Blake wrote: “I feel very strongly that it will be for the best interests of the Hall that a younger woman should deal with the problems that must arise under the new conditions for Women Students in Oxford.”12 She was only fifty-two, but the war and the flu epidemic that followed, as well as increasing student enrollment, had taxed her strength. The ten candidates considered for the post included Eleanor Lodge, who might have seemed a natural successor. She had been a student at LMH from 1890 to 1894, returning in 1899 as history tutor, and seemed almost indispensable to the college. In her autobiography, she confessed that “the dream of my life had always been to end my days as Principal of Lady Margaret Hall.”13 Committee members decided, however, that the college needed new blood and that they should look outside their own community for leadership. They offered the post to Lynda Grier, economics tutor and fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, who began her twenty-four-year tenure in the fall of 1921. Although Eleanor Lodge later acknowledged that the committee had acted wisely in appointing someone from the out-

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side, she was bitterly disappointed at the time and did not feel she could remain at LMH under someone new. Luckily, she secured the principalship of Westfield College in London and began her work there in October 1921, just as Miss Grier was being installed as the new principal of LMH. Lynda Grier proved a fortuitous choice for LMH, although the contrast with Henrietta Jex-Blake was at first startling. The former principal came across as reserved and aloof but decidedly elegant; Miss Grier was friendly and approachable but decidedly plain. Large and ungainly, she knew she did not make a favorable impression at first meeting and tried to put people at ease. “I know I am outsize and ugly and formidable to look at, and that could be very off-putting and even terrifying to the young and nervous. So I have always felt that I really ought to take even more trouble than most people to be affable and friendly.”14 According to reports from the students who went through LMH during her tenure, she succeeded. They recalled her tolerance and humor, remarking that “because she was willing to laugh with those of a different generation she could often also laugh at them without offence.”15 At LMH, Miss Grier quickly demonstrated that she had a good head for business and the ability to delegate responsibilities skillfully. Expansion was one problem she tackled immediately. Shortly after the war, 120 women indicated a preference to attend LMH, but only thirty-four places were available. Clearly, the college needed additional space but, equally clearly, had no money in the bank to finance new buildings. Lynda Grier called on her training as an economist to effectively persuade the LMH Council that it was not foolhardy to incur debts in the interests of expansion. By 1926, the college had a new addition—a block that linked Old Hall and Wordsworth Building named in honor of Eleanor Lodge. Still more room was needed, however, and a timely benefaction of £35,000 in 1930 enabled LMH to build another extension that could house all the students and tutors who had been forced to take outside lodgings. The generosity of Mrs. E. S. Harkness, an American, financed this new block, which opened in 1932. She and her husband (whose immense fortune came from the Standard Oil Company) were committed philanthropists who contributed large sums to medical, educational, and civic institutions in the United States and abroad. Mrs. Harkness became acquainted with Lady Margaret Hall through Margaret Deneke, who, as choirmaster of LMH gave numerous lectures and musical recitals in the United States between 1926 and 1930 to raise building funds for the college. Miss Deneke, her sister Helena (bursar and German tutor at LMH since 1913), and their mother lived next door to LMH in a house that was once Elizabeth Wordsworth’s residence, and they had long taken a keen interest in college affairs. (The Denekes, well known in Oxford for their intellectual and musical pursuits, often opened their home for small concerts.) After the extension was completed, Mrs. Harkness insisted that it



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be called Deneke, “after those who worked for it and not after those who merely gave money.”16 Lady Margaret Hall had now doubled in size from 1921, when Lynda Grier first became principal. Even with the generous Harkness benefaction, however, LMH incurred a debt of £59,000 to achieve the luxury of finally housing the entire college—principal, tutors and fellows, students, and administrative and domestic staff—under one roof. The college borrowed heavily to pay for this project, but Miss Grier so shrewdly managed the finances that, by the time she retired in 1945, the debt was a manageable £10,000. In her August 23, 1967, obituary notice, the Times described Miss Grier’s financial leadership as “genuinely creative” and praised her for carrying out an ambitious building program “with the minimum of fuss.” In 1928, LMH celebrated its fiftieth year of existence, preferring to date its inception from 1878, when a residence hall for women was initially discussed, rather than 1879, when women students first appeared in Oxford. The university contributed to the jubilee by bestowing an honorary doctor of civil law degree on Elizabeth Wordsworth, then eighty-eight years old. Her wit had not deserted her, and she joked that the vice-chancellor was “making a Scarlet Woman of me at my age,” in reference to the crimson gown of the DCL.17 In the same year, another honor came her way when she was appointed Dame of the Order of the British Empire. Normally, those so honored attended an investiture at Buckingham Palace, but Miss Wordsworth begged off because of her age. In a gracious and tactful gesture, the Duchess of York (the mother of the future Queen Elizabeth II) brought the DBE insignia to the college when she was guest of honor at a jubilee luncheon and presented it to the former principal in a private ceremony outside Lodge Building. Five years later, Elizabeth Wordsworth, the most important name in the history of LMH to date, died on November 30, 1932.

Somerville between the Wars When Emily Penrose retired as principal of Somerville in 1926, she, like Elizabeth Wordsworth, was showered with honors. In recognition of her valuable service to both Somerville and the university, Miss Penrose received an honorary DCL from Oxford on June 1, 1926, before a large crowd assembled in the Sheldonian Theatre and became Dame Emily in 1927 when George V appointed her DBE. A reserved, even formidable, woman who often kept others at arm’s length, Emily Penrose had proved to be a judicious administrator who skillfully led her college toward selfgovernance and women in Oxford toward academic respect. In selecting a new principal, the Somerville Council chose someone very different from Miss Penrose. Margery Fry had none of her prede-

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cessor’s aloof dignity but was lively, direct, and witty. After Dean Vera Farnell saw the new principal shortly after her arrival in college, wearing a red coat and with her hair cut short, she wrote: “It was clear from the first that the change would keep us alive.” For her, Miss Fry symbolized “youth rather than middle age, adventure rather than any settled state of satisfaction.”18 One of the happiest events during Miss Fry’s reign was Somerville’s jubilee celebration in the summer of 1929. Somervillians of all ages attended the anniversary dinner, served under a marquee on the college grounds on July 6. Maude Thompson, one of the original 1879 students, spoke to the guests, as did alumna Eleanor Rathbone, newly elected to Parliament. Margery Fry paid tribute to the men and women who by their foresight and devotion had brought the college into being and helped it grow and prosper. She was demonstrably proud of the Somerville tradition and of her own Somerville heritage, but she would choose to leave the college in the spring of 1931—less than five years after she began. Miss Fry had made no secret of the fact that she never intended to remain at Somerville for a long time. For one thing, she found the Oxford academic world uncongenial. The petty politics and the “mediocrities entrenched in privilege” irritated her, particularly after her brother Roger was rejected for the Slade Professorship of Fine Arts at Oxford in 1927.19 He was well suited for the post, but his unconventional private life (he lived with a woman who was another man’s wife) apparently played an important part in his rejection. When news of the decision got out, a journalist for the New Statesman could not resist a little irony at the university’s expense: “One would have thought that Mr. Fry’s combined qualities as a critic and historian must be well-nigh unique: it is therefore all the more gratifying to know that England is rich enough in art-scholarship to permit Oxford University safely to dispense with his services.”20 Sooner than expected, the Somerville Council had to turn its attention to finding a successor. It did not cast a wide net but settled on Oxford born and educated Helen Darbishire, who had been Somerville’s English tutor since 1908. A noted authority on the works of Milton and Wordsworth, she often seemed more comfortable in the world of literary scholarship than in the rough and tumble of everyday life. Pauline Adams described her as the “least worldly” of Somerville’s principals but maintained that she displayed a good head for business and common sense.”21 In her history of Somerville, Adams also related that Miss Darbishire’s appointment was not without controversy. Some people thought the council should have looked for a woman more in the mold of Margery Fry, one who knew about the problems young women faced in the world outside the university. Others felt that, because Oxford was a place of learning, the council had acted appropriately in electing a principal who was primarily a scholar.



A Changing Order

Many Somerville undergraduates regretted the unfortunate publicity that attended their principal’s appointment, but theirs too was a mixed response to Miss Darbishire. Some found her alarming and remote (“communing with the soul of Wordsworth”); others viewed her as warm and supportive.22 Jenifer Wayne (Somerville 1936) saw her principal’s alarming side when, during a tutorial, Miss Darbishire caught Jenifer using an edition of Milton that she considered inferior. Jenifer thought all she had to do was buy the appropriate copy before the next tutorial, but before she had a chance to do so, she was summoned to the principal’s office. Miss Darbishire solemnly asked: “Do you consider, Miss Wayne, that a student who has not troubled to use the standard edition of Milton is worthy of a scholarship at this college?” Jenifer was aghast; luckily for her, the matter went no further. She bought the approved book but said she could never again look at the offending edition with ease.23 Nina Bawden (Somerville 1943), on the other hand, affectionately recalled her initial interview with Miss Darbishire. When the principal volunteered her fondness for Wordsworth, Nina rashly said she found him overly wordy with too much “romantic tosh about Nature.” The principal calmly suggested that Nina might go back to the poems in a year or two and see if she felt differently. Nina never forgot the “note of courteous respect for callow opinions followed by a gentle suggestion that I might, perhaps, think again.”24 In leading Somerville through the anxious years leading up to and during the Second World War, Miss Darbishire often had to lay aside her research and writing on Milton and Wordsworth, for there were many claims on her time. She had to adapt to new social conventions between male and female undergraduates and oversee major building projects. One of those projects led to dissension in the college. In the spring of 1932, the Somerville Council learned that an anony­ mous donor wished to give the college a structure “for the purpose of meditation, prayer, and other spiritual exercises.”25 At the time, Somerville held services in the dining hall, and the council, of the opinion that such a building could be valuable to the college, instructed Miss Darbishire to proceed further with negotiations. Meanwhile, many others who got wind of the project were displeased; they felt that a chapel would violate Somerville’s nonsectarian tradition. Fifty-five members of the Association of Senior Members (ASM) sent a protest letter to the council in October 1932. The council replied in a letter that asserted its right to make such a decision but promised that all services in the chapel would be conducted according to nonsectarian principles. Not entirely placated by this response, the ASM at its general meeting in June 1933 proposed a motion that the association should voice its displeasure at the way in which the council had accepted the offer of a chapel without consulting old students. Opponents of the motion maintained that the council had every legal right to judge

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what was best for the college. In the voting, only eight members supported the motion while forty-three opposed, and the meeting ended with a vote of confidence in the council. The plain stone chapel was erected across the garden from the library during 1933 and 1934, but another controversy arose over its opening. The donor wanted to arrange a simple ceremony herself, but the council voted unanimously to veto this idea, maintaining that only the college should be responsible for services held in its name. The dedication service was finally held on February 16, 1935, but the donor was not publicly revealed until 1940. In a memorial service for Emily Kemp, an 1881 student, Miss Darbishire acknowledged her as the benefactor, whose vision for the building in which they were gathered to honor her was reflected in the inscription over the doorway: “Mine House shall be called a House of Prayer for All Peoples.”26 Pauline Adams contends, however, that the chapel has always been controversial at Somerville and that “no subject is more calculated to guarantee an uncomfortable Governing Body meeting or to provoke dissension among old members.”27 The chapel furor only increased Somerville’s reputation as a college of independent women who had no fear of voicing their opinions. Somer­ villians were also reported to be the most scholarly among women students at Oxford, led by a brilliant teaching staff, with Mildred Pope and Hilda Lorimer as the elder stateswomen, so to speak. Maude Clark, an outstanding medievalist, had been on board since 1919, succeeded after her death in 1935 by one of her favorite pupils, May McKisack (Somerville 1919), an eminent historian of fourteenth-century England. History was also well represented by Lucy Sutherland (Somerville 1925) and Isobel Henderson (Society of Oxford Home-Students 1927). Mary Lascelles (LMH 1919) joined the staff in 1932, first as tutor and then as fellow in English, and achieved distinction with her scholarly works on Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson. Miss Pope severed her forty-year tenure with Somerville in 1934, when she assumed the position of chair of romance philology at Manchester University. Enid Starkie, who succeeded Miss Pope as fellow of Somerville and tutor in modern languages, could not have been more different from her predecessor. Where Miss Pope was gentle and self-effacing, Miss Starkie was flamboyant and rebellious. She achieved almost legendary status in Oxford for her pugnacious yet sensitive personality; her then unconventional taste in clothes (trousers, reefer jacket, and beret, usually in scarlet and blue); her political activities in both the senior common room and the university; and her gregarious nature. Her biographer maintained that “no other women’s college would have produced or tolerated or held Enid Starkie. Somerville gave her intellectual stimulus and scope, and, more, it gave her touching understanding.”28



A Changing Order

Dorothy Crowfoot (Somerville 1928) joined the Somerville staff as tutor in natural science in 1935 and was elected to an official fellowship in 1936. Although deeply interested in the students who came under her care, she was even more devoted to her laboratory work in crystallography. As Dorothy Hodgkin (she married in 1937), she brought great distinction to her college and university by winning the Nobel Prize in 1964 for her work on the structures of penicillin and Vitamin B12 , the only British woman to become a Nobel laureate. She was awarded the Order of Merit in 1965, which, as her biographer notes, “is the highest honour any British citizen can receive, awarded for greatness in the arts, sciences, or public life, and is the personal gift of the Queen.”29 Hodgkin became only the second woman to be offered the OM—the first, in 1907, was Florence Nightingale. Also the first serving fellow of the college to have a baby, she traveled the world in her role as scientist and on behalf of international relations, while maintaining a happy marriage and raising three children.

Changes at St. Hilda’s Winifred Moberly, first cousin to the former principal of St. Hugh’s, succeeded Christine Burrows as principal of St. Hilda’s in 1919 and soon became known as a sympathetic and understanding person who ran her institution with a light hand. Rosamund Essex (St. Hilda’s 1919), who interviewed for a place at St. Hilda’s under Christine Burrows, remembered loathing Burrows immediately. She felt Miss Burrows to be one of the old school of college principals who were “quite frightfully maternalistic, poking into one’s private affairs” and felt nothing but relief to enter St. Hilda’s under a different principal, one who seemed inclined to treat her students as mature, responsible young women—and tolerated them even when they didn’t act that way.30 Rosamund recalled that a group of students spirited away a hated bust of Miss Beale, which stood in the dining room, carried it to the river, and poked it with hockey sticks until it sank. Miss Moberly discovered the identity of the perpetrators but declined to punish them (she herself may have been happy to see it go), merely requiring that a photograph of Miss Beale replace the bust in the dining room.31 Unfortunately, Miss Moberly’s health began to fail in 1924, and for the next four years, she was often unable to carry out her duties as principal. The vice-principal and economics tutor, Julia de Lacy Mann (Somerville 1910), stood in for her on these occasions. Miss Mann had joined the staff at St. Hilda’s in 1923, hoping to pursue work on the economic history of the textile trade in Britain, but quickly had to assume responsibilities that went beyond those of tutor and researcher. When Miss Moberly died of a heart attack in April 1928, the council elected Miss Mann as principal. She did not possess Miss Moberly’s easy social skills—often appearing re-

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mote and silent to her students—but she proved an extremely good administrator during her twenty-seven-year tenure. She largely put aside her own personal academic interests and worked unsparingly to elevate St. Hilda’s position within the university. St. Hilda’s desperately needed more room for students after the war. In 1919, the hall had forty-eight students; in 1920, seventy-one. Almost half had to live in hostels outside the college, a situation that did not promote corporate unity. Though money was tight, the council discussed building an extension, a goal requiring at least £45,000 that the college did not have. By a stroke of good fortune, Cherwell Hall, a teacher-training college near St. Hilda’s on the same road, was offered for sale to the college in June 1921 for £17,500. The council promptly agreed to the purchase, even though the building needed extensive renovations, and the first students moved into what was now called St. Hilda’s South in Michaelmas term, 1921. South students enjoyed the extensive grounds that came with the property, but they were less enthusiastic to find they shared the space with a pigsty. In the 1922 Chronicle, however, a reporter happily noted that South was now free of the pigs, “as not even the most fervent of their admirers could deny that their presence tended to detract from the charm of South Garden.”32 After St. Hilda’s opened South, the college could accommodate eightysix students in both its residences (the older now called Hall), and once the alterations to South were completed in 1925, that number rose to a hundred. Being able to purchase Cherwell Hall just when more women were clamoring for places at Oxford proved a great boon for St. Hilda’s. If the college had not been able to accept the women who applied there, it most likely would have fallen far behind the other women’s colleges and possibly not survived. By 1933, St. Hilda’s financial situation was secure enough, thanks to student fees and money from both the Cassel trust and the appeal fund, to embark on another building scheme, a wing that would provide a new library with fourteen more students’ rooms above. The existing library, housed as it was in the basement of Old Hall, was not without its hazards. Joan Platts (St. Hilda’s 1929) had the unnerving experience, while working there one evening, to find the whole floor covered with tiny frogs; she walked across furniture to get out without flattening any.33 Work began on the extension, which was just north of Old Hall, in 1933, and students moved in a year later. These rooms were the first in the college to have washbasins with running water, which Christine Burrows (who was on the council) thought an unnecessary extravagance. Reflecting her Victorian upbringing, she saw no reason why maids should not continue carrying up cans of hot water twice a day.34 The oak-paneled and galleried library took longer to complete and was not available to students until 1935. The



A Changing Order

formal opening of the new wing, called the Burrows Building in honor of the first two principals, took place on June 15, 1935. The Burrows wing was St. Hilda’s last major building project until the late 1950s. Nevertheless, within a short time (1921–1935), the college had transformed itself from a small institution to one that could better compete with the larger colleges of Somerville, LMH, and St. Hugh’s. St. Hilda’s possessed a noteworthy tutorial staff during the 1920s and 1930s. Elizabeth Levett (LMH 1904) was a gifted historian who served as tutor between 1913 and 1923 before moving on to King’s College London. In 1929, she became professor of modern history in the University of London. English tutor Eleanor Rooke (LMH 1905) was greatly loved by many of her students for her wit, spontaneity, and self-effacement. Agnes Sandys (later Agnes Leys) came as history tutor in 1923 and, although demanding of her students, inspired them with her infectious enthusiasm for medieval history. Kathleen Chesney (LMH 1918), appointed French tutor in 1922, became the most published member of staff at that time with a number of carefully researched books and articles in her field of early French literature. Her standards of scholarship were high, and one student remembered her advising pupils that “worry is no substitute for work.”35 Dorothy Whitelock (Newnham 1921), who joined the staff as lecturer in English in 1930, became one of the most distinguished Anglo-Saxon scholars in the world. Teaching was not her true métier, for she could not always adapt her own prodigious knowledge of Anglo-Saxon language, literature, and history to the simpler needs of her students and could be harshly critical of faulty scholarship. She had a gift for research, however, and when she began to publish in 1937, made substantial contributions to her field for over twenty years. In 1956, she was elected fellow of the British Academy and in 1957 was appointed to a professorship in AngloSaxon at Cambridge.36

A Brief Summary Throughout the interwar period, the women’s societies in Oxford struggled to meet the increased demand for higher education among women while coping with budgets that fell far short of what they needed to accommodate more students. That they were able to rise to the challenge of expansion is a tribute not only to the generous benefactions of people outside Oxford but also to the hard work and faith of devoted members and friends. The women principals all felt the stress created by lack of space and money, and their anxieties were only increased by the crises of the 1920s and the turmoil of the 1930s, both inside and outside the university.

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D

uring the turbulent 1920s, the Oxford women’s colleges were   bedeviled by more than financial problems. An administrative    crisis at St. Hugh’s would threaten the stability of all the women’s societies, and a proposal to limit the number of women students would highlight their still marginal status in the university. As in the other women’s colleges, the number of students at St. Hugh’s increased dramatically after the war, far beyond the college’s capacity to house them under one roof. The building completed in 1916 could accommodate 71 students (there were 64 in college at that time), but by 1923, numbers had shot up to 151. Although the college purchased the leases of three nearby houses to cope with the overflow, some students had to be lodged in other North Oxford homes under the care of hostesses, much like the Home-Students. Why did St. Hugh’s accept so many more students than it could comfortably accommodate? For one thing, more young women wanted to attend Oxford than ever before, and the college, in common with the other women’s societies, badly needed the additional fees that increased numbers would bring. For another, despite the Mordan legacy, St. Hugh’s had acquired a heavy debt for its 1916 building program, and its principal, Eleanor Jourdain, did not feel she could afford to turn away qualified students who wanted to attend. Still, her problems were not very different from those of the other women principals—all had to cope with burgeoning numbers, shortage of space, and lack of money. Given these pressures, therefore, Miss Jourdain appeared to be an able administrator who had successfully negotiated her college’s removal to new premises at a time when the war made all business and financial transactions difficult. She was also a scholar with a French doctorate and seemed more the embodiment of what a college principal should be at this period than her thoroughly Victorian predecessor. Those with more intimate knowledge of St. Hugh’s knew, however, that all was not well.

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Crisis at St. Hugh’s Inside the college, Miss Jourdain was not universally admired. Some of the younger staff members chafed under her refusal to delegate any power. Even Joan Evans, who always remained loyal to Miss Jourdain, admitted that she was an autocrat. In truth, Miss Jourdain often acted as if she were still headmistress of a private school rather than as a college principal, and she could not accept that those below her in rank had any right to question her authority. For some time, she and Cecilia Ady, history tutor and former vice-principal, had been at odds. When Miss Ady was appointed tutor in 1909, she and Eleanor Jourdain remained for many years on affectionate terms, but the relationship had gradually deteriorated to the point where Miss Jourdain perceived Miss Ady as a threat to her sovereignty. Cecilia Ady was part of a growing movement among tutors for more rights and privileges within their colleges, and she and other St. Hugh’s tutors were in favor of a new constitution that would precisely define their status. Although Miss Jourdain agreed in theory that the government of St. Hugh’s should come to resemble that of the men’s colleges, in practice she did not like her tutors to manifest such an independent spirit. Believing Miss Ady to be the chief instigator, the principal requested that Miss Ady cease to be a resident tutor. Miss Ady moved out, but as her mother’s house was just across the road from the college, she remained involved with activities in the senior common room. Throughout the fall term of 1923, the hostility between Miss Jourdain and some of her tutors was apparent, and the principal escalated the conflict on November 19. She asked Miss Ady to see her on college business that morning, and the tutor arrived to find the chair and secretary of the council also present. Miss Jourdain then accused Miss Ady of disloyalty and said she would not recommend her reappointment. When asked to resign, Miss Ady adamantly refused to do so and declared she would appeal to the council as a whole at its regular meeting in five days’ time. The principal made clear to the chair that she intended to press for Miss Ady’s dismissal at the upcoming meeting and that she herself would resign if council overrode her wishes. Rachel Trickett, a future St. Hugh’s principal who wrote about the college crisis, expressed astonishment that the council chair, himself the head of an Oxford college, did not try to dissuade Miss Jourdain from a procedure that he could not have followed at his own institution.1 One observer noted that if tutors could be dismissed because they disagreed with their heads about college business and then discussed their dissatisfaction with fellow tutors, “ninety per cent. of the tutors of the men’s colleges should resign tomorrow.”2 Miss Trickett believed that the chair’s behavior could be attributable to the still “anomalous position of the women’s colleges” in

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Oxford, whereby women tutors did not have the same status as their male counterparts.3 In any event, Miss Jourdain either received no counsel from the chair that her actions might be unwise or ignored it, for she carried through her resolution at the November 24 meeting of the council, recommending Miss Ady’s termination on the grounds of disloyalty and insubordination. Miss Ady got the chance to rebut the charges against her, and both women then withdrew before the council’s debate on the matter. A heated discussion followed, but instead of deferring the issue until people calmed down, the council, by one vote, elected not to renew Miss Ady’s appointment. Six council members immediately resigned, as did five tutors, including Edith Wardale, who was one of the first students and had been part of the administrative and tutorial staff since 1889. In a display of solidarity for Miss Ady and her supporters, tutors at the other women’s colleges boycotted St. Hugh’s students and refused to teach them. Miss Jourdain quickly tried to fill the positions left vacant by the resignations but could not easily do so before the winter term began. Some students were left hanging, and a few of them, not surprisingly, said that their work suffered from the disruption. Fortunately, some of the tutors who resigned continued to work informally with third-year students so that they would be prepared for final examinations. On December 15, 1923, former students held a general meeting and expressed a vote of no confidence in Miss Jourdain. Alarmed parents suggested to the council that they ask a high-court judge to intervene, but their request was turned down. By now, each side believed it had the moral high ground and refused to compromise in any way. The Oxford Magazine, while trying to steer clear of personality issues, gave its opinion on January 24, 1924: Men, conscious, no doubt, of their greater propensity to evil, have provided their colleges with two antidotes to masculine infirmities— properly framed constitutions to prevent the occurrence of disputes, and Visitors to act as agreed and ultimate courts of appeal if disputes should, nevertheless, occur. Is it an insult to the intelligence of the superior sex to advise that it, too, should take steps to submit itself to these salutary restrictions?4 In one more attempt to get the conflict resolved, parents and former students requested on March 1 that the council ask the chancellor, Lord Curzon, to act as visitor. The council finally agreed, the chancellor accepted, and an inquiry began. On April 1, 1924, Lord Curzon handed down his decision. Noting that he had been for some time aware of inharmonious relations at St. Hugh’s, he found that “no imputation rests on Miss Ady.”5 The St. Hugh’s Coun-



Weathering Storms

cil, outraged that other colleges had boycotted its students, had asked the chancellor to specifically comment on that issue, but his opinion was probably not what it wanted to hear. He said that Miss Ady bore no responsibility for other tutors’ actions and that the tutors did not exceed their rights. Lord Curzon recommended that the council consider constitutional reforms so that such an unfortunate episode would never occur again and decide whether reforms should be coupled with personnel changes. After hearing this opinion, the treasurer of St. Hugh’s took it upon himself to inform Miss Jourdain that she ought to resign, but in the end it was unnecessary. She died of a heart attack on April 6, 1924. Miss Jourdain’s death did not end the turmoil. Her supporters believed she had been mercilessly hounded and persecuted, and Miss Moberly never forgave those whom she felt were responsible. Miss Ady’s friends believed she had been entirely vindicated and that the subsequent upheaval was not of her doing. Those who sided with Miss Ady found, however, little cause for jubilation. The college had been made to look like an immature institution that was incapable of governing itself, at a time when women in Oxford wanted to project quite the opposite image. The Oxford Magazine had reinforced this idea by a blunt commentary: The plain truth is this: St. Hugh’s College is not a college at all, as that term is understood in Oxford. It is a girls’ school. . . . And whereas in a “college” the loyalty of the “staff” is primarily to the institution, and is often best expressed by sharp cleavages of opinion, in a school the loyalty of the “staff” is owed largely to the head, and such charges as the Principal of St. Hugh’s brought against Miss Ady, which in a College would be merely laughable, in a school are grave.6 Deep rifts now existed among people in college, and tensions did not evaporate quickly. In fact, the philosopher Mary Warnock, who came as tutor in 1949, wrote in her memoir that she was warned on first arriving at St. Hugh’s never to mention the affair.7 The episode was considered so sensitive that all references to it have been expunged from the St. Hugh’s Council meeting reports. The tutors who resigned were never reinstated, and the college lost several women who had distinguished subsequent careers. Miss Ady served as history tutor for the Society of Home-Students between 1924 and 1929 before returning to her college as a research fellow in 1929. She became an honorary fellow in 1950, was a member of the St. Hugh’s Council, and served as secretary of the Association of Senior Members for twenty years. Most people thought, however, that she would have become principal but for the controversy. That she loved St. Hugh’s was not in doubt, as demonstrated by her bequests to the college on her death in 1958. Along with valuable gifts of books and pictures, she left £10,000 to go, if possible,

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toward building a new chapel. That wish was not realized, but St. Hugh’s used the money to refurnish and decorate the existing chapel.8 St. Hugh’s acted quickly in finding a replacement for Miss Jourdain. In June 1924, the college had the good fortune to secure the appointment of Barbara Gwyer as principal. Miss Gwyer had been a classics scholar at LMH (1900) and, before accepting the position at St. Hugh’s, served as the warden of a women’s hall at Leeds University. As the Oxford Magazine commented, “Her experience has been gained among University students, not among schoolgirls,” and there was hope that she had the maturity and courage to deal with the difficult situation she would find at St. Hugh’s.9 Luckily, she did possess the necessary qualities to lead the college out of chaos. People described her “absolute fair-mindedness,” which was essential to a college used to suspicion and distrust.10 They also said that “her success was due as much to what she refrained from doing as from what she did.”11 Miss Gwyer realized she had a valuable resource almost at her door— her own former principal, Elizabeth Wordsworth—and did not hesitate to take advantage of Miss Wordsworth’s experience and wise counsel. Miss Wordsworth, in turn, never felt so connected to the college she had brought into being. She and Miss Moberly were not close—Miss Wordsworth never received an official invitation to dine at St. Hugh’s until after Miss Moberly retired—and she did not have much contact with Eleanor Jourdain, although they were on cordial terms.12 In contrast, Barbara ­Gwyer drew Miss Wordsworth into college affairs, and both women benefited from the experience. There was, however, nothing soft or sentimental about Miss Gwyer, and her austere appearance—“long-boned, long-necked, long-nosed”— only enhanced her image as a woman of firm principles.13 She terrified most of her students on first contact. One said that having the principal to tea “was rather like entertaining God,” but many came to appreciate her dry sense of humor and her eccentricities—and not a few her impartial kindness.14 In time, she gained the respect of her undergraduates and her colleagues for restoring order to St. Hugh’s. Rachel Trickett, writing on the crisis weathered, summed up Miss Gwyer’s contribution in this way: Her skill, reconciling spirit and diplomatic instincts saved St. Hugh’s from what could have been a gradual decline compounded by indifference and hostility from the University, and division and strife from within. The College owes to Barbara Gwyer more than can be fully conveyed.15 Miss Gwyer also presided over increased unity in an architectural sense. When Miss Mordan died in 1915, she left the bulk of her estate to her friend Mary Gray Allen, but the estate was to revert to St. Hugh’s on



Weathering Storms

Miss Allen’s death. In 1927, that legacy came to the college in the sum of £27,000 and was immediately put to use. St. Hugh’s bought the title to the land on which it had built in 1916, along with that of two adjacent houses that had been leased for student accommodation, and added a new wing with more students’ rooms—the Mary Gray Allen Wing—to the main building. In 1936, St. Hugh’s jubilee year, the college extended the Mary Gray Allen Wing and opened a new library that had space for fifty thousand books. By 1937, the principal had the satisfaction of seeing all the undergraduates and resident tutors housed either in the main college building or in the five houses that stood close by. St. Hugh’s had achieved a measure of harmony, both psychologically and physically.

Royal Charters While the St. Hugh’s row, as it came to be known, was being played out, many feared it would permanently damage the reputation of all the women’s colleges. Fortunately, this fear was not realized. The crisis spurred each of the Oxford women’s societies, strongly encouraged by the chancellor, into much-needed reforms of their constitutions, which brought them more into line with the men’s colleges. (The men’s colleges are self-governing corporations established by royal charters, with power vested in the head and fellows, and almost completely autonomous.) All four residential women’s colleges had long been registered as jointstock companies under the Board of Trade and governed by councils of men and women who, except for the principal, often had no direct affiliation with the colleges. (The Society of Home-Students was in a different category, first as a noncollegiate body and then as a delegacy of the university.) Over the years, the rules had been amended so that a certain number of tutors could be elected to the councils, but their representation was by no means secure. Former students who were elected or appointed to the councils could have as much power as the tutors, and sometimes even more. Now that the women’s colleges were increasing their tutorial staffs, it became clear that tutors should have a larger voice in the government of their colleges, just as tutors had in the men’s colleges. A change of this sort did not fit easily into the framework of a joint-stock company, but the crisis at St. Hugh’s, with a tutor summarily dismissed without redress, highlighted the weakness of the present system. After the chancellor’s ruling in the case, the university notified the women’s colleges that, if they wanted to retain their privileges under the statute of 1920, they should seek incorporation by royal charter or act of Parliament, appoint a visitor with adequate power, and include officers and tutors on the governing body. Only St. Hilda’s, still called St. Hilda’s Hall, was initially reluctant to comply, because it remained financially dependent on St. Hilda’s Incor-

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porated College, Cheltenham, with which it was amalgamated. The hall came under pressure from the other women’s societies to choose between the university and Cheltenham, however, and it finally opted to align itself with Oxford. St. Hilda’s Incorporated College was eventually dissolved, and it turned over the properties and assets of the old hall to what would become the new college. It also generously did not require repayment for money that it had given to the hall over the years. The Cheltenham link did not disappear, however. Four representatives of Cheltenham Ladies’ College sat on the newly constituted St. Hilda’s Council—two ex officio and two elected—and some of the scholarships were reserved for students from Cheltenham.16 After St. Hilda’s resolved where its affiliation lay, it joined the other three women’s colleges in redrafting its constitution. Although there were some differences in how the colleges framed these documents, all followed a similar pattern by forming a corporate body of the principal and council. Tutors were now, by virtue of their office and not by election, permanent members of council as official or professorial fellows, and there was also provision for a visitor. The constitutions did not at this date, however, go so far as to exclude a certain number of outside members, including men and former students, from being elected to the councils. With new governing systems in place, the colleges duly applied for incorporation by royal charters and received them before the fall term of 1926. St. Hilda’s Hall was now incorporated as St. Hilda’s College, but Lady Margaret Hall chose to keep the original designation out of respect for tradition. With outside members on their governing bodies, the women’s societies could not yet qualify as full-fledged collegiate institutions within the university, but they had begun the process whereby they would eventually govern themselves.

The Limitation Statute By the mid-1920s, the women’s colleges in Oxford seemed to be enjoying a period of relative stability. They could now see their students take degrees, had weathered a serious period of turbulence, and had new constitutions and charters in place. But signs pointed to a pendulum swing in Oxford’s attitude to women. A new crisis would soon threaten the autonomy of the women’s colleges. It began innocently enough with a debate in the Oxford Union in November 1926 on the motion, “The Women’s Colleges shall be razed to the ground.” Lucy Sutherland from Somerville was asked to oppose, the first woman undergraduate invited to speak to this defiantly all-male body. Before a large house, she entered into what seemed the light-hearted spirit of the occasion by claiming that women were a harmless race whose chief



Weathering Storms

excitements were gathering wild flowers and making brass rubbings from the floors of country churches. Although the motion carried by twenty-five votes, there was general consensus that Miss Sutherland had acquitted herself well. Some may have felt that the debate signified nothing more than a small joke at the expense of women. Others, however, were aware of a growing sentiment within the university that too many women were coming to study at Oxford and that their number should be limited by statute. In November 1925, a year before the Union debate took place, the Hebdomadal Council had appointed a committee to inquire into the relative numbers of men and women resident undergraduates with the view to determining whether those numbers should be regulated. There had been complaints that lecture halls, reading rooms, and examinations were overcrowded and speculation that increased numbers of women students had caused the problem. In 1913, before the war began, undergraduates, including noncollegiate students and residents of small private halls, numbered slightly above 4,000, while women numbered 348 (275 from the four colleges and 91 Home-Students), a ratio of almost twelve to one. Just after the war, numbers shot up for both sexes: over 4,400 men and 544 women in 1919, a ratio closer to eight to one. Women students increased even more until they numbered 742 in 1926 (521 at the colleges and 221 HomeStudents). By 1926, the number of male students had decreased, largely because the ex-servicemen who flooded into Oxford to resume their studies had taken their degrees and left. There were now about five times as many male undergraduates as female. The number of women students had increased by 394 between 1913 and 1926, a growth that some found alarming. Certain people in the university, and not all of them diehard antifeminists, believed they should now limit the number of women permitted to study at Oxford. The committee of Council looked at what evidence it could amass and on December 5, 1925, published its conclusions. Members reported that overcrowding was not yet a serious issue, despite congestion in lecture and examination rooms, but maintained it could become so if student numbers rose. They looked at matriculation figures for both men and women in 1924 and 1925 and concluded that women now constituted about one in four of resident students, whereas in Cambridge the ratio of women to men was only one in eight or nine. Believing that women should not be allowed to increase their population further at Oxford, the committee recommended that the total number of resident women undergraduates not exceed 700 and suggested that the four residential colleges be limited to 135 students each and the Home-Students to 150 (totaling 690). Ten places could then be kept in reserve for emergencies. Committee members also recommended that the Hebdomadal Council consult the governing bodies of the women’s societies before coming to a final decision.17

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As might be expected, the women’s societies received the committee’s conclusions with dismay. Ruth Butler, vice-principal of the Home-Students, wrote to Miss Burrows after she heard the news to express her consternation: “The university is overcrowded; women nearly 1 to 4; cut down the women. Next I suppose they thought if they fix the College number at a round sum each, the Colleges would then fall on each other and not on Council and that none of the four Colleges would mind about us.” She went on to say that she understood why the university might want to fix a ratio between men and women but that it was completely unfair “to cut us down after letting us grow to our present size. And for our Society, not only our finance but all our tutorial arrangements so carefully built up would go crash.”18 The council at Lady Margaret Hall drafted a reply to the Hebdomadal Council on January 12, 1926, which basically expressed the concerns of all the women’s colleges. First, LMH council members suggested that no real evidence existed to imply that congestion and overcrowding were caused by women. Second, they maintained that “where there is a minimum consistent with efficiency, there is . . . also a maximum.” They reported that the LMH Council had resolved in 1920 “to increase the number of students to 150” and that all plans for building and maintaining staff had been based on the 150 figure. Hence, “any curtailment seriously hampers the finances of the Hall and the arrangements for the repayment of debt within the time prescribed by the Women’s Property Committee in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission.” Council members also avowed that they did not wish to expand their numbers above 150, and they understood that the other three residential colleges shared their view. They therefore saw no reason for a proposed statutory limitation on numbers, “which would introduce differentiation in the treatment of men’s and women’s colleges.”19 In response to communications from people on both sides of the limitation issue, the Hebdomadal Council published its revised recommendations on February 15, 1926. Now, Council suggested that the total number of women students be fixed at 765, “or such greater number as may represent a ratio of one woman to every four men undergraduates in residence,” and that the Home-Students not exceed 220, a number that had been set by the Delegacy for Home-Students in 1923.20 These new figures were more advantageous for Home-Students but did little to appease the four residential societies. With Hebdomadal Council elections coming up in the spring term of 1926, some women in Oxford, notably Annie Rogers, saw a chance to change the direction in which Council was heading by replacing some of the current members with people believed to be more favorable to women’s issues. They lobbied hard and succeeded in getting five candidates



Weathering Storms

elected who were council members at one or other of the women’s colleges. Lynda Grier was among them and had the distinction of becoming the first woman to sit on the Hebdomadal Council. A jubilant Annie Rogers confided to a friend that it was not hard to turn such elections, but her maneuvering was, in fact, a tactical blunder on the part of a normally astute politician. She had shown her hand too blatantly. The idea that women could tilt an election in their favor filled many men with genuine alarm and hardened the attitude of those who wanted to curb the increasing influence of women in Oxford. Convinced that the Hebdomadal Council would no longer act on a limitation proposal, a group of university men decided to force the issue. In March 1927, they presented a petition to the Hebdomadal Council, signed by 210 members of Congregation, asking that a resolution be brought forward to restrict the number of women matriculated in any given year to 250, or one-fourth of the men matriculated. The petitioners wrote that they were concerned about the increase of women and that they wanted Oxford to remain predominantly a man’s university. The women’s colleges countered with their own document to Council, stating that they had all voluntarily offered to limit their numbers so as not to exceed 150 (the Home-Students would remain at 220) and had altered their bylaws to that effect. Consequently, they contended, no legislation was necessary, maintaining that it would infringe on their rights as colleges to fix their own numbers and that it signaled a “marked retrogression in the policy of the university in 1920 when women were admitted to full privileges.”21 Joseph Wells, warden of Wadham and one of the prime movers for a limitation statute (and a former member of the LMH Council), took exception to the women’s document. In a letter to the Times on March 19, 1927, he argued that the petition did not infringe on college rights for the simple reason that the women’s so­cie­ties were not colleges in the Oxford sense (i.e., self-governing, independent bodies within the university). He also made the rather sinister statement that all the privileges accorded to women in1920 “depend on a Statute of the university, which could be repealed.” Another letter appeared in the Times on the same date from F. J. Lys, provost of Worcester. He acknowledged that many of the petitioners were upset by the recent Hebdomadal Council election in which opponents of a limitation statute replaced those who supported it. He also wondered why Oxford women took such a strong stance against the petition if they had no wish to increase their numbers. Writing to the Times on March 22, 1927, A. D. Lindsay, master of Balliol, expressed amazement that people should wonder why the women’s colleges opposed the petition. He said that colleges without endowments could not survive if their numbers were too small, and he argued that the large influx of women just after the war had now ceased. The continued

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increase that some feared had not happened. Between 1920 and 1924, the number of women at the four residential colleges increased by 96 (from 421 to 517) but increased by only 6 between 1924 and 1926 (from 517 to 523). In a rebuttal to Wells, Lindsay wrote that the women’s colleges “prize that reasonable independence and power of self-determination which is so precious to every collegiate society in a university, whether it is a college in the full technical and legal sense or not.” A compromise resolution was brought forward in the spring of 1927 that proposed to fix the number of women undergraduates at 840 (160 each at LMH and St. Hugh’s, 150 each at Somerville and St. Hilda’s, and 220 Home-Students). It also aimed to prevent any new woman’s society from being founded unless the average number of women in residence during the three preceding years had been at least 160 less than one-fourth of the men. Even though the figure of 840 was more liberal than the number women had voluntarily limited themselves to, women and their supporters were still unhappy. They issued a manifesto to members of Congregation on June 11 that outlined their objections to the statute. 1. The women’s colleges have already adopted by-laws that fix the maximum number of students in residence, a maximum that does not exceed the numbers proposed in the statute. The statute would “damage their status, their autonomy and their security” and introduce “a bad precedent for interference with the independence of an incorporated college.” 2. The existing regulations for founding a new women’s society are more than sufficient to protect the university from an unwanted establishment. 3. The fear that Oxford is in danger of ceasing to be predominantly a man’s university is groundless. The statistics show that the sharp postwar increase in women students has now slacked off considerably. 4. Because it is impossible to know what developments may occur in the next generation, “the statute appears to us to be an ill-advised attempt to bind the future.”22 In response, those who favored the limitation petition argued in a letter to the Times on June 11, 1927, that, even if the women’s colleges had no wish to increase their numbers at present, they might relent if the pressure to expand became too hard to resist, for it would be financially beneficial to bring in more students. To forestall such a possibility, which could “risk university peace and wellbeing,” the petitioners felt it was imperative to legislate a definite proportion of men and women in order to keep Oxford predominantly for men. They also dismissed the objection that the proposed statute would interfere with the autonomy of the women’s colleges,



Weathering Storms

claiming that the university had complete control over their status, by virtue of the 1920 statute admitting them as members, and that the women’s situation was therefore in no way comparable to the men’s. The day of reckoning came on June 14, 1927, when the limitation statute was promulgated in Congregation. A heated debate preceded the vote, and for Evelyn Proctor (Somerville 1921), then a St. Hugh’s tutor (and later principal), it “was certainly the most unpleasant of the many debates to which I have listened. The speeches showed clearly the amount of hostility to the women members of the university which was then felt and which continued to exist to some extent up to the war.”23 Finally, voting began, and those wishing to limit the number of women allowed to study at Oxford carried the day by 229 votes to 164. Winifred Moberly of St. Hilda’s described the statute as “murder-in-advance,” but it would soon be on the books, where it remained in effect for the next thirty years.24 In the face of defeat, women could take some comfort from the fact that they had been able to renegotiate the committee of Council’s original recommended quota of 700 women students, which would probably have led to bankruptcy for the women’s colleges. Whether the approved quota of 840 had long-term detrimental effects on the women’s colleges is hard to assess, and people argue both sides. Lucy Sutherland felt that “it kept the women’s colleges . . . poor; it drove away able young women to less restrictive universities, and it resulted in very poor pay for their teachers.”25 Others maintained that the limitation statute had little effect on the finances of the women’s colleges: Without endowments or other external funds, they would be poor anyway, and “lack of money for building is almost as effective a limitation as an arbitrarily imposed quota.” Evelyn Proctor believed that the limitation statute caused no real harm until after World War II. Then, the men’s colleges increased rapidly, and by the time the quota was abolished in 1957, the proportion of women undergraduates to men was lower than in 1927.26 Lucy Sutherland felt more strongly than Miss Proctor that the quota had been damaging from the outset, although she admitted that the women’s colleges probably would not have grown much more than they did during the interwar years. “But, without this barrier there would have inevitably been a steady expansion under the pressure of demand, so that when the post-war expansion of universities began, Oxford would not have been so badly placed as it was.”27 There could be no doubt, however, about what the statute signified: The university had a right to remain predominantly “a man’s university with a certain number of women admitted.”28 In a 1927 article, Joseph Wells offered no apology for his role in the conflict but explained why he and his fellow petitioners believed they acted correctly:

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Oxford on the strictly educational side can receive and educate the ablest women. . . . But Oxford is much more than a strictly “educational” body, and it is more than doubtful if women can ever share the full life, which centuries of students have gradually elaborated for men and for the development of English manhood.29 Pauline Adams believed that the attitude shared by Dr. Wells and his cohorts “seriously sapped the new self-confidence of the women’s colleges, and gave rise to a much more self-conscious feminist and anti-feminist feeling in the university than had previously existed.”30 Alice Bruce, viceprincipal of Somerville in 1927, wrote that “our chief opponents are positively smarmy when one meets them” but also believed that many men were ashamed of their votes and later gave “a variety of foolish reasons for them.”31 Nevertheless, it was clear that many men, even those not opposed in principle to women students in Oxford, had become alarmed by what they saw as the rising influence of women in the university and felt they should take steps to halt it. In a letter to the Oxford Magazine on June 9, 1927, an “Old Oxonian” also suggested that the “autonomy and dignity” of the women’s societies were vulnerable to attack because they “have lost by death or removal from Oxford many of their best and oldest friends.” Another Oxford Magazine correspondent, aware that the limitation debate had aroused strong emotions on both sides of the issue, remarked that heretofore, women in Oxford “have shown themselves to be good winners; we believe that they will prove themselves no less good as losers.”32 It is true that most did not dwell on their defeat. Women in Oxford had learned by long and sometimes hard experience the virtues of patience. It was time once again to draw on that experience.

15 Looking Outward

D

uring the 1920s and 1930s, the rules of social behavior that   guided young men and women in Britain were more casual than   before the war, and the university and colleges had to adapt to the new social mores. The authorities also had to adapt to a changed political atmosphere within the university, as students searched for ways to respond to national and international crises.

Rules of Conduct When women were admitted to membership of the university in 1920, they officially came under the disciplinary control of the vice-chancellor and proctors, as had long been the case for male students.1 On matriculation, male undergraduates received a university memorandum on discipline that was based on a set of rules laid down in a 1636 statute, De Moribus Conformandis. The purpose of the statute was to prevent undergraduates from participating in activities that would annoy the citizens of Oxford and generally “to forbid conduct unworthy of members of the university.”2 In their earliest form, the rules prohibited Oxford men from, among other things, entering wine shops or tobacconists, participating in games that might cause injury or danger to others, carrying weapons, loitering in the streets, keeping animals, or visiting townspeople in their homes or shops. The rules had been modified and updated over the years but not to the extent that they addressed the subject of women students. For the first few years after women became members, university authorities did not present them with the men’s memorandum or make special regulations for them. The authorities were content for the present to leave the discipline of women students to their principals, having already approved a set of intercollegiate rules for women that were drawn up by the five principals around the time of admittance. Designed to keep women students on a short leash now that they were members of the larger university community, the rules dictated that no woman student was ever to be alone with a man other than her brother, either inside or outside her college. She was not encouraged to hold conversations with male stu229

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dents before or after lectures and had to secure a chaperone for mixed-sex parties in restaurants and cafés. If a woman student wanted to join male undergraduates in a university club or society, she was required to get permission from her principal and to be accompanied by a chaperone. These intercollegiate regulations struck many Oxford students, male and female, as archaic and unnecessarily prohibitive, particularly in 1920s Britain. All over the country there had been a general relaxation of the old rules of correct conduct for young men and women, and the sexes casually intermingled in ways that would have been considered improper before 1914. Dance halls (a craze for dancing swept Britain in the twenties), cafés, cinemas, motorcycles, automobiles, unsegregated workplaces, and a general feeling of “eat, drink, and be merry” all contributed to breaking down barriers between men and women. Yet, despite grumbling about the rules that inhibited contact between them, male and female students at Oxford seemed hesitant about getting to know each other socially. They had occupied separate spheres for so long that they did not know how to join their two worlds. Many male students were inclined to keep Oxford women at arm’s length, unsure whether they wanted to share their university with them. Several things may have contributed to their standoffish attitude. Quite a few Oxford men had had little experience with women, particularly in an academic setting, and were not sure what was expected of them in this arena. Also, many had been instilled with a belief in the value of an all-male collegiate society, where the opportunity to cultivate friendships in an informal and relaxed atmosphere was often considered as crucial to the Oxford experience as a good education. Even for men inclined to seek out contact with women students, the atmosphere within the women’s colleges could appear unwelcoming and forbidding. A St. Hugh’s student remembered the “daunting formality” with which a male friend had to contend when he called on her in college and maintained that their friendship was nipped in the bud by the frosty reception.3 Women students were probably more enthusiastic than men during the early 1920s about moving beyond the self-sufficient lives they had led in their own colleges. They wanted to participate more fully in the life of the university—an opportunity long denied them. The first step was to look to each other, and they formed a few intercollegiate societies; however, most were short-lived for lack of support. Inevitably, their gaze turned toward groups with a university affiliation, clubs and societies that might be based on politics, intellectual interests, music, or religion, and had usually, until the 1920s, been composed of men only. Now, women showed an interest in joining, but they did not always receive a warm welcome and were sometimes refused membership. The Union, Oxford’s famous debating society, rejected women as members until 1963, despite periodic efforts to reverse the blackball. Barbara Castle (St. Hugh’s 1929), indignant that women could not be Union members and showing the fighting spirit that



Looking Outward

made her famous as a Labour politician after college, for more than thirty years adamantly refused all Union invitations to come back to Oxford and participate in debates as a “privileged outsider.” Finally, she agreed to return to oppose a motion that women’s emancipation had been a flop. She first taunted the male audience with their “craven fear of being equal” and then, in her own words, “wiped the floor” with her opponent.4 She had the satisfaction of seeing the motion go down in defeat but not yet that of seeing women win the vote for Union membership. Women students were not allowed to become full members of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) until 1964, although they increasingly took guest roles after World War II. Margaret Rawlings (LMH 1925) regretted that women students seriously interested in acting had so few opportunities to indulge in it and tried to join an amateur drama group headed by the poet John Masefield in nearby Boar’s Hill. LMH refused her permission to act outside its precincts, even though, in her o ­ pinion, the incollege drama club was practically moribund. Margaret was so angry that she withdrew from the university, settled in London, and made a name for herself on the stage and screen. She particularly enjoyed being offered the part of Lady Macbeth by the OUDS in 1937—the society frequently used professional actresses in its performances—and “came back in triumph” to finally act on an Oxford stage.5 Society memberships notwithstanding, occasions where men and women hobnobbed were numerous enough that Oxford felt compelled to issue a special memorandum to women students in 1923 that required them to be familiar with the principals’ intercollegiate rules on mixed gatherings and visits to men’s rooms. (Men were given no similar pronouncement at this time.) By 1923, the intercollegiate rules had been amended so that women students were no longer expected to refrain from conversing with male students at lectures. Also, they could now join mixed groups for the theatre, on walks and bicycles, and in automobiles, provided that they received permission beforehand and that two women students were present. The rules for visiting men’s rooms or attending joint societies in men’s colleges remained the same: Chaperones were always required and written approval from deans of the men’s colleges had to be secured for women to enter the precincts. One new rule that came into effect—no mixed parties in cafés except between the hours of 2:00 pm and 5:30 pm—had an interesting history. After the war, it became the practice for male and female students (though not necessarily together) to break for coffee and pastries at 11:00. This seemingly harmless diversion nevertheless aroused the ire of Lewis Farnell, vice-chancellor between 1920 and 1923, who called it a “lazy and selfindulgent” habit and denounced the food as “unnecessary and unmanly.” He wanted to make cafés out of bounds for all students between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm, but he received a letter from the women principals ask-

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ing him to reconsider. They argued that, since women students frequently had to be in town over several hours for lectures, it would be a hardship to deny them access to cafés where they could rest and take refreshment. Farnell relented to a degree. He did not put a stop to the practice of morning coffee but tried to ensure that mixed parties could gather in cafés only for the more socially acceptable afternoon tea. In his memoir, An Oxonian Looks Back, Farnell wrote that he always regretted his decision not to abolish “a demoralizing habit which I hear now on good authority is injuring Oxford. I wish I had been more ruthless and not so susceptible to the feminine appeal.”6 Between 1920 and 1926, male and female undergraduates continued to receive separate disciplinary memoranda, with the women still largely governed by the principals’ intercollegiate rules. In Michaelmas term of 1926, the vice-chancellor and proctors, without consulting or even notifying the women principals, issued a single document to both men and women: “Memorandum on Conduct and Discipline.” It covered such topics as dancing, drinking outside college, driving motor vehicles, acting, forming mixed parties, and wearing academic dress. Among the numerous prohibitions, the memorandum forbade undergraduates to speak at open political meetings, except by permission of the proctors; to visit the bar of any pub, hotel, or restaurant; to drive a car without a proctorial license or to keep a car at an unlicensed garage; to eat at a restaurant or hotel not approved by the proctors; to attend public dances in or near Oxford; and to take dancing lessons from instructors not approved by the proctors. As a further guide to proper behavior, the document specified acceptable dancing teachers, hotels, restaurants, and garages. The university had been in no hurry since admitting women as members to fit them into the long-standing disciplinary code, but now its policy had apparently changed. Although what brought about this shift is unclear, Oxford authorities signified with this memorandum that they had assumed control for all undergraduates, male and female. While they made no reference to earlier intercollegiate rules for women, they still stressed the special responsibility of the women principals for regulating interaction between the sexes. The document specified, for instance, that women students could not participate in any activity that involved men unless they first obtained permission from their principals and unless at least two women were present. In contrast, men had no similar injunction to obtain permission for mixed gatherings, although they were forbidden to enter a woman undergraduate’s room under any circumstances. Now that the rules were laid out in writing, however, men could not plead ignorance if they found themselves in situations that defied regulations. They, along with women students, could be held accountable. Some criticized the memorandum as overly protective and maintained that it exposed the women principals to ridicule, but Annie Rogers felt otherwise. She believed



Looking Outward

that, because the rules came from the university and applied to both men and women equally, undergraduates could not “attribute them to the outof-date prejudices of five old maids”—the women principals.7

Breaking the Rules During the interwar years, many women students walked a fine line between conforming to the rules laid down for them and trying to circumvent them. Although these women rarely gave much cause for alarm, accounts of college life during these decades indicate that they were not prepared to be as subservient to authority as their predecessors. Phyllis Wallbank (St. Hugh’s 1931) maintained that her policy was “to ask permission when I knew it would be granted, but to refrain when the result was uncertain,” a pragmatic approach not uncommon for women students of her day.8 If they saw no good reason for a particular rule to exist, they discreetly ignored it. Women students were all forbidden to have alcohol in their rooms, for example, but Anne Fremantle (LMH 1927) remembered that some women disguised their sherry or gin in medicine bottles with the label, “One tablespoon to be taken at bedtime.”9 Oxford wine merchants were apparently willing to participate in deception, if the memory of one St. Hugh’s student is correct. She recalled that when a friend ordered sherry to be delivered to her college—for legitimate purposes, as it turned out—the merchant asked, “Would you like it disguised, Miss?”10 As interactions between male and female undergraduates became more frequent during the late 1920s and the 1930s, women students spent time alone with men on walks and in boats, recalling later that the danger of being caught only increased the fun. Although most did not dare flout the rule about entertaining men in their rooms—their colleges were too small for them to get away with that breach—they were less circumspect about their behavior in the men’s colleges, where they rarely encountered figures of authority. Under the 1926 rules, women had at last been relieved of having to obtain a chaperone to visit a man’s room. They still could not go unaccompanied but could now choose a companion their own age. Diana Hopkinson, who entered LMH in 1931, said she did not mind that particular regulation at all. By acting as a companion to her friends, she got to know many more men than if she had been trying to meet them on her own. If, as Diana claimed, an obliging companion sometimes found an excuse to leave early, so much the better, provided the college scouts were willing to turn a blind eye.11 Some women now adopted a favorite technique of male students—­ having others sign in for them as if they were in college for the evening and then sneaking back in after the 11:00 pm curfew. (A Home-Student later confessed that she felt sorry for subsequent generations that had no curfew and never had to climb back into college: “Where is the fun of it?”)12 Bar-

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bara Castle, who described herself and a friend as “natural rebels against the petty restrictions of college life,” remembered sneaking out to a dance, trying to climb back in, and being hampered by their long dresses. When a police officer (town, not gown) appeared out of the shadows, they feared the game was up. To their relief and amazement, he courteously gave them a push over the wall and went on his way.13 Dilys Powell (Somerville 1920) was one of the few who got into serious trouble for this practice, at least publicly. In 1924, she had the misfortune to be caught trying to climb over the garden wall of her college with the help of her future husband, then an undergraduate at Christ Church. Miss Penrose accused Dilys of dragging “the name of Somerville in the dust” and promptly rusticated her (an Oxford term for suspension) for two terms.14 Dilys proved her principal wrong, for she came back to Oxford after her exile, took a first in modern languages, and was later elected an honorary fellow of her college. If Dilys had been at Somerville a few years later, after Miss Penrose retired, she might well have escaped with only a reprimand or a gating (confinement to college for a specified period). Miss Penrose was very much of the old school, however, and of the belief that the slightest impropriety would jeopardize women students’ position in Oxford and that transgressors must be severely punished. The other women principals in Oxford certainly expected their students to abide by university and college rules in principle, but they could also show a wise tolerance for youthful indiscretions. Lynda Grier of LMH was described as someone who “did not exalt minor incidents into crises” and who “salted her discourses on law and order” with humor.15 Even Barbara Gwyer at St. Hugh’s, who was legendary for her firmness with students, had a sense of humor and the ability to adapt to a more permissive era. Mary Challans (later Mary Renault, the historical novelist) found St. Hugh’s oppressive when she first arrived in 1925. Only a year or so later, however, she realized that the rules were less strictly enforced. “Undergraduates returning late could climb the walls, and the punishment for being caught was no more than having their names published on the college notice board, which could be seen as a source of pride as much as of shame.”16 Eveline Crallan, who came to St. Hilda’s in 1931, remembered that students felt fairly free to ignore many of the rules and that “no questions were asked unless our work was poor and our tutors wanted to know why.”17 When Grace Hadow became principal of the Home-­Students in 1929, she was at first unsure how much latitude she had in applying the university rules to her students. She consulted the senior proctor, for example, about whether the “two-woman” rule for mixed parties in boats and cars applied to engaged couples and received the reply: “Dear Miss Hadow, Even the Proctors are human.”18 Thereafter, she trusted her own instincts in such matters and applied the rules with a large dose of common sense.



Looking Outward

At Somerville too, with Miss Penrose’s retirement in 1926 and the election of Margery Fry as principal, the atmosphere grew more relaxed, for Miss Fry, unlike her predecessor, seemed in touch with the world of young people. Katharine Trevelyan (Somerville 1928) recounted a conversation with the new principal that she could never have had with the old one. Katharine was required to sign a document pledging to obey university rules, but she returned the form unsigned. When Miss Fry asked why, Katharine said that she had always been prone to night rambles and could not promise to be back before curfew. Miss Fry then explained that one reason for the rule was to protect a woman undergraduate against the possibility of getting pregnant, which would be a setback for all women students in Oxford. Katharine recorded that she and the principal laughed at the explanation, but it caused Katharine to rethink her position. “I agreed that if signing the document was a promise not to have a baby while at college, I was happy to sign it.”19 Miss Fry took another step that would have been unthinkable for Miss Penrose. Concerned that some Somervillians might not know how babies were conceived, she arranged for them to hear two lectures by a female doctor on health and basic physiology.20 As her biographer wrote, Miss Fry “shared the faith of her progressive contemporaries that uninhibited knowledge would solve most problems,” and she did not want her students “to live at the mercy of emotions they did not understand.”21 Somerville students regretted Miss Fry’s departure only five years later, and many were not initially encouraged by the election of Helen Darbishire to the principal’s post, fearing that she might be too isolated from young people and their problems. They were also probably dismayed when college discipline became considerably tighter than under Miss Fry, but they eventually learned that their new principal knew how to enforce rules judiciously. Jenifer Wayne (Somerville 1936) remembered that when a woman from her college was caught spending the night in her boyfriend’s room by his landlady, everyone expected the young woman to be sent down (expelled), but Miss Darbishire took the line that the couple was not having a casual affair and that her student “was too valuable a member of the College, and too admirable a person, to be so penalized when others had slipped through the net.”22 In two other instances, one in 1935 and one in 1937, Miss Darbishire showed less leniency with Somervillians who were discovered to have spent the night in their boyfriends’ rooms. The young men involved were merely rusticated, while the women faced expulsion. In the first incident, the college eventually rusticated the offending woman student for one term only, but in the second, it sent away the miscreant for good. Why these three cases were handled differently is unclear, but Pauline Adams noted that, in the 1937 episode, the Somerville Council voted for expulsion (Dorothy Hodgkin, then Miss Crowfoot, registered the sole dissenting vote)

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and that Miss Darbishire was unhappy about the decision. 23 The latter case attracted more outside publicity, which may have accounted for the harsher penalty. As the principal explained to the junior common room, some already saw Somerville as a “dangerously radical place,” and the college might well lose the support of parents and schools if it were seen to be lenient in such matters.24

Sexual Attitudes Given the nunlike existence of earlier generations, that Oxford women were now spending the night and presumably having sex with their boyfriends may seem surprising, but they were part of a larger culture in which sexual issues were more openly discussed in Britain than before the war. Vera Brittain wrote of herself and her friends in 1922: “As a generation of women we were now sophisticated to an extent which was revolutionary when compared with the romantic ignorance of 1914.”25 Many women who wrote about their student days at Oxford in the 1920s and particularly the 1930s did not shy away from the subject of sex and sexual attraction. For most of the 1920s, however, men and women still inhabited different worlds in the university, at least socially. Elizabeth Harman (LMH 1926), who became the well-known biographer Elizabeth Longford, was one of the first Oxford women upon whom male undergraduates showered attention. She was pretty, chic, intelligent, and vibrant, and although there had been, and were, other women students with appealing qualities, few enjoyed the active social life that Elizabeth led at Oxford. Elizabeth herself knew that she was one of the first to really break free from the confines of a woman’s college, but she maintained that, even before her final year in 1930, women students were finding friends among the male undergraduate population as never before.26 In explaining her popularity, she believed that a series of fortunate circumstances—being introduced to the right people at the right time, for example—helped propel her into the limelight. One turning point revolved around her reply to a question. When a male companion asked what she thought of “Oscar Wilde and all that,” she answered, “Oh, I think that’s quite all right.”27 This seemingly cryptic exchange apparently established her as an open-minded individual, and she was introduced into a cosmopolitan circle of Oxford men who greatly influenced her social and intellectual development. (They were commonly known as “aesthetes”—as opposed to “hearties”—and were passionately devoted to art, culture, and sometimes-extravagant conversation.) Although one male friend at Oxford had urged Elizabeth to “develop her prostitute powers,” she wanted to be considered sexually sophisticated, not to be sexually experienced.28 Some of the women who succeeded her at university were more impatient in this arena. When Barbara Castle ar-



Looking Outward

rived at St. Hugh’s in 1929, she frankly admitted that she was searching for sexual enlightenment and felt that everyone she knew there seemed to be doing the same. At first, she just wanted to be sure about the facts of life and was dismayed that her college peers seemed as ignorant as she was. Taking up a collection from other students, she wrote off for a book that offered explicit advice, complete with diagrams. In no time, the book became a well-thumbed volume. Barbara did not limit her campaign for sexual knowledge to St. Hugh’s. As an officer in the University Labour Club, one of the liveliest and most popular interwar societies, she was part of a group that invited a wellknown sex expert to address one of the meetings. Barbara was excited by the enthusiastic turnout and by the speaker’s matter-of-fact approach, but the evening had uncomfortable consequences for her. Miss Gwyer summoned her the next day to recount what had been discussed at the meeting. In front of this formidable, gaunt figure, a red-faced Barbara had to stammer out the words “love-making,” “contraception,” and “masturbation,” while the principal listened in silence. Finally, she allowed Barbara to stop and only admonished her: “You are pure, but there would have been people in that audience who are not pure. Now run along.”29 Although she escaped punishment, Barbara was furious that Miss Gwyer had put her in such an embarrassing position. In fact, “pure” was the last thing Barbara wanted to be, especially when two of her closest friends at St. Hugh’s were having affairs. Reading and hearing about sex were just not adequate substitutes for the real thing. In her last term, therefore, she chose to spend the night with a young man in his college room, a breach of the rules for which she could have been expelled if discovered. She admitted that it was a reckless thing to do, particularly as the experiment turned out not to be worth the risk, but she was very grateful that the man’s scout, who knew exactly what was going on, chose to keep quiet about the tryst.30 Barbara Castle was not alone in her desire to become sexually experienced. Diana Athill (LMH 1936) said that she and her friends discussed men endlessly, particularly in terms of when and with whom they were going to lose their virginity.31 Other women who wrote about their lives at Oxford during the interwar years were discreet in discussing their relationships with men, but one thing is very clear: Despite regulations to the contrary, they were often alone with their men friends, and no one in authority seemed the wiser. How many women students were sexually active during these years is open to question. In a 1937 book entitled Oxford Limited, Keith Briant wrote that, while a small number of women students overdid everything, from drink to sex, he doubted whether more than 20 percent of women students left university no longer virgins.32 Writing a rebuttal in the Oxford Magazine, a woman undergraduate of 1933–1936 who did not sign

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her name took exception to Briant’s statistics. She felt that the number of women students who committed “actual misconduct” was more like 2 percent and thought even that figure might be too high.33 She protested that Briant had been careless in his research, had unduly raised alarm among parents and university authorities, and had unfairly blackened the reputation of women at Oxford. Whatever the truth, the genie was now out of the bottle and could not be put back. Male and female undergraduates were commingling as never before, and it is not surprising that opportunities for sexual encounters would now be part of Oxford life. The cloistered days were over for both sexes.

The World Outside Oxford undergraduates also became less isolated from the larger world as the 1920s drew to a close. They were disquieted by what they saw going on outside the university. Elizabeth Longford spoke of “a shadow [that] began to creep over our carefree Oxford existence”; by 1930, she and her friends could no longer “remain completely encapsulated in academic hedonism.”34 Britain’s postwar economic boom had been brief. As a result of the 1929 U.S. stock market crash and a chaotic world economy in general, Britain in the early 1930s found a reduced market for its industrial staples—coal, iron and steel, textiles, and ships. Massive unemployment followed, particularly in the northern industrial regions, and thousands of people faced hunger and privation. To make matters worse, the government introduced widespread cuts in unemployment benefits in a misguided attempt to economize. On hunger marches, angry workers descended on London to protest their plight and government policies toward them. Many students—their social consciousness awakened by the spectacle of despair—showed their support when the marchers came through Oxford by fortifying them with food and drink. Brian Harrison characterized the shift between decades in this way: “In the 1920s ambitious undergraduates tended to identify with those who were socially above them as energetically as their successors in the 1930s identified with those lower down.35 To raise money for distressed areas, many women students voted in their junior common rooms to eat cheaper meals at specified times and send the difference to those in need. This gesture sparked some controversy, however. In the Oxford Magazine for March 4, 1937, a Somerville correspondent reported that students in college were required to obtain parental consent before they would be allowed to lunch on bread and cheese once a week. Clearly annoyed by such interference, she wrote, “We cannot starve, even on bread and cheese, without permission. Letters will be sent to every parent or guardian, asking that their daughter may make great sacrifice of one meal a week for benefit of families to whom even that one would seem luxurious.” LMH ruled against the cheaper meal proposal on



Looking Outward

the grounds that the college received inclusive fees for maintenance and education of its students and could not therefore divert the money to other purposes. But compromises were eventually struck at all the colleges, and on May 13, 1937, the St. Hugh’s correspondent for the Oxford Magazine reported a happy result. The proceeds of cheese lunches in her college and others had been substantial enough to fund a scheme for providing milk at cheap rates to children below school age in the colliery district of North Staffordshire. She added that the Ministry of Health would monitor the experiment and, if it found that the children’s health improved over a twoyear period, would fund similar programs in other areas.36 Just as young Oxford had been aroused from its protective cocoon by the economic depression in Britain, so it was stirred by ominous international events during the early thirties. Increased militarization in many parts of the world; dictators in Italy, Germany, and Russia; turmoil in Spain and the forced abdication of King Alfonso XIII; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931; and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations to foster cooperation among nations—all contributed to a growing concern that another major war might become a reality. Many students did not insulate themselves against the worsening international situation but became increasingly preoccupied with politics during the 1930s. Many also turned away from their traditional loyalty to either the Liberal or Conservative party and leaned leftward toward socialism and communism as they looked for new ideas that could both revitalize the nation and ease world tensions. Elizabeth Longford noted the difference between her contemporaries and the students succeeding them: “Politics began to oust poetry. If I had had to take a refresher course in order to qualify for élite male society, it would have been on Karl Marx, not Oscar Wilde.”37 The Labour Club, with its commitment to socialist objectives, became the largest political organization in the university, and both male and female students enthusiastically crowded into its meetings. The communist October Club, founded in 1931, was also popular during the early and midthirties, and a number of women students joined. Many would have agreed with Nora Sturgeon (St. Hilda’s 1934), who said that she was attracted to the club because “the communists were the only people seriously opposing Hitler.”38 Her infatuation did not last long, however; she, like numerous other women students, became disenchanted with Stalinist Russia and withdrew her membership before she left Oxford. Edna Edmunds of St. Hugh’s (who would later marry Denis Healey, the future chancellor of the exchequer) succinctly expressed her own disillusion with the party: “I came in on Spain, and went out on Finland.”39 Oxford students were also affected by the strong pacifist sentiment among many of the British that had been heightened by a wave of books, plays, poems, and movies in the late twenties about the useless slaughter and futility of the Great War. Shiela Grant Duff (LMH 1931) remembered

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seeing two antiwar films (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and All Quiet on the Western Front) that left her with a “fervent horror of war” and a “profound conviction that the participants on both sides were not so much armed combatants as fellow sufferers from some terrible wickedness committed against them all.”40 The peace and disarmament movement had many adherents in the early thirties, Oxford students among them. In this climate, the Oxford Union chose pacifism as its debating topic for February 9, 1933, in what would become one of the most notorious debates in its history. The motion, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and its Country,” carried by 275 to 153 votes. The press seized on the vote as evidence that Oxford was a hotbed of young radicals with no respect for tradition or patriotism, blew it up into a sensational story, and attributed to it far more importance than it deserved. A number of people, including Winston Churchill, believed that the vote sent a signal to Hitler and Mussolini that the British had no stomach for a fight and would do anything to avoid it. David Walter, who wrote a history of the Oxford Union, summed up the opinion of many historians on the effect of the debate: “All in all, the activity or inactivity of the British Government is far more likely to have influenced Hitler than a decision by a few hundred Oxford undergraduates six and a half years before the war.”41 Instead, he and others, like historian J. M. Winter, believed that the vote was not against war per se but was a protest against jingoism and “the shrill patriotism of the popular press of 1914.”42 In fact, when faced with Hitler’s growing threat several years later, Union voters rejected absolute pacifism and carried the motion, “War between nations can sometimes be justified,” by 176 votes to 145. Martin Ceadel, who wrote about the 1933 debate in a 1979 issue of the Historical Journal, felt that the “King and Country” motion was a “symptom of the new political outspokenness which the self-styled ‘old Oxford,’ more accustomed to the dualism of hearty and aesthete than of right and left, found disconcerting. Indeed so alien did these harbingers of a new ‘student’ culture seem to those who expected the Union to behave as befitted a national institution that for the first time in Britain students became the subject of national controversy.”43 For the next few years, it was certainly true that Oxford students often made the news through their meetings and demonstrations, and it was not just old Oxonians who were perturbed. The university did not always view the political activities of its students with a benevolent eye, and clashes of opinion became common. When in May of 1933, the University Labour Club tried to hold a public meeting for Ellen Wilkinson, a noted left-wing union organizer and MP, to talk about “Hitlerism,” Oxford refused to allow it on the grounds that undergraduates were too much engaged in political activity. Further, the vice-chancellor said he would in future refuse permission for any university political club to stage public gatherings, maintaining that club



Looking Outward

meetings must be kept strictly private and not be advertised outside the university. More conflict arose several months later when a group of students formed the Anti-War Association and began to criticize the presence of the Officers’ Training Corps at Oxford and other universities. The vicechancellor and proctors then ruled that undergraduates must not publicly criticize established university institutions, basing their decision on an ancient disciplinary statute that instructed junior members of the university to show due respect to senior members. The ruling only fanned the flames of undergraduate discontent; in defiance of the ban, a group of students organized a protest meeting on November 1 to which Cambridge men and women who supported free speech were also invited. The proctors and bulldogs stationed themselves outside the meeting place and tried to persuade students to go back to their colleges. The majority refused, attended the meeting, and then tried to rush out en masse so that they could not be identified. The proctors succeeded in collaring a few students, including five women, and gated them for a term and a half, although the punishment was rescinded for most of the trespassers. Reacting to criticism from outside about their handling of the freespeech incident, the vice-chancellor and proctors issued a statement that appeared in the Times on November 8, 1933, defending their actions. Maintaining that they rarely interfered with undergraduate discussions in private and in club meetings, they emphasized their right to judge what behavior was permissible for students outside college precincts and their right “of intervening at their discretion to prevent or punish such activities as they may deem inappropriate for undergraduates.” They felt no need to apologize for banning public meetings that garnered unwelcome notoriety and that were, in their eyes, prejudicial to the university. The situation called up strong feelings on both sides of the issue. A Times editorial for November 10, 1933, applauded the vice-chancellor and proctors for their statement, saying that undergraduates at Oxford were free to discuss whatever they liked but “that irresponsibility is secured to them only within the ring of the university privileges.” On the other side, the Times on November 21 published a protest letter from a group of former students— including Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby, Naomi Mitchison, and Maude Royden—to Oxford’s vice-chancellor, deploring the university’s subjective application of its discretionary policy: “This policy can only be acceptable if the authorities use their discretion in such a way as to give undergraduates the fullest freedom for discussion of current topics of controversy, and for criticism of established institutions, not excepting those of the university itself.” Tensions remained between Oxford students and university authorities throughout the 1930s, evidenced by numerous articles and letters in the press. A 1935 article in the Times even suggested that women were to blame for the “notorious deterioration of Oxford—in scholarship, athlet-

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ics, manners, taste.”44 Few people went that far, but if letters to the editor are anything to go by, many were concerned that Oxford students, both men and women, spent too much time on activities that distracted them from their studies. A. D. Lindsay, vice-chancellor from 1935 to 1938, took exception to these criticisms in a speech reported in the Times on October 7, 1937. He wondered why none of the correspondents referred to the unsettled state of the world and its effect on young men and women. He asked the letter writers to imagine being bombarded with threats of war and then truthfully answer whether they could settle down to three or four years of “leisured and steady preparation for a life which you are told you and your friends are probably not going to lead.”45 Undergraduate life at Oxford ceased to be an item of interest to newspapers when war was declared on September 3, 1939. Many of the young men who had been subjected to criticism proved no less ready to fight for their country than those who had raced to enlist in 1914. The difference was that the patriots of 1939 responded stoically, not enthusiastically. They accepted the necessity for war but saw no romance in it. What the role of women students would be in this new conflict was as yet unclear, but even from the earliest days of the war, many people felt that, as Ruth Butler noted, “the commonplace ‘We are all in it’ applied to us even in Oxford. There was not the same poignant distinction between soldier and civilian as in the earlier war; nor the same agony that followed the rush of Oxford’s flower into the volunteer army of 1914. Soberly and thoughtfully our ancient university prepared herself for the struggle, and determined to offer the best service in her.”46

A Postscript Annie Rogers, whose life had been so closely entwined with the early history of women’s education at Oxford, was hit by a lorry on October 27, 1937, while crossing an Oxford street on a dark, rainy night and died the next morning. She was eighty-one years old. Born and bred in Oxford, she was only twenty-two when she joined the first council of the AEW in 1879, and her dedication to women’s education at Oxford became ­legendary. No other woman could equal her devoted service. Annie Rogers always plunged into the middle of skirmishes that occurred over the presence of women students in Oxford and never seemed to weary of canvassing for support, if she thought her work could advance the women’s claims. She was not always popular, however, with either friends or foes. She talked too much and wore people down with persistent claims on their time. Her Times obituary noted that she could often be found in Broad Street when the Hebdomadal Council meetings were adjourned, “lying in wait for the university politician with whom it was desirable to have a talk.”47 Yet the women’s cause at Oxford needed some-



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one like her, “fearless of unpopularity, and completely unintimidated by the age or status of any opponent,” for despite her flaws, she was a skilled tactician who knew not only how to attack but also how to strategically withdraw when the occasion warranted.48 There are two memorials in Oxford to this remarkable woman. On the north side of the university church of St. Mary, where she worshipped, a garden was dedicated to her memory on May 17, 1939, and the provost of Oriel delivered an address praising her outstanding qualities. In October 1939, a sundial was erected on the terrace of St. Hugh’s, inscribed appropriately in Latin: “Floribus Anna tuis faveat sol luce perenni” (Anna, may the sun favor thy flowers with perpetual light).

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W

hen Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, few people heard the news with surprise. The British had lived in the shadow of European dictators for too long to hope that war could be kept from their island. Once again, the young men of Oxford had to respond to the call to arms, but there was no rush to destruction as in 1914. Men under the age of twenty were not called up at first, and Oxford began the fall term of 1939 with a sizeable number of male undergraduates in residence. Before the war ended, however, many Oxford men—and women—were called to service, and the university had to devise new plans and schemes to keep operating.

Wartime Conditions Both the city and university of Oxford were in the process of transformation when Michaelmas term began in the autumn of 1939. Anticipating possible bombing raids, authorities placed Oxford under a complete blackout at night, which meant that no light was to escape from any window or door. All over the city and in the colleges, people filled and stacked sandbags, boarded up openings, hung blackout curtains, or covered windows with dark paint. No streetlights could be lit at night, which made traveling difficult, but there were compensations. Grace Hadow, principal of the Home-Students, remarked on the beauty of the city under a full moon, “with no artificial light to disturb its peace, . . . and with Magdalen Tower and St. Mary’s spire steeped in a radiance infinitely more lovely than any flood-lighting. To walk around Oxford on a moonlight night under present conditions is an experience never to be forgotten, and is to come back with a strange sense of serenity and immortality.”1 Colleges packed away valuable manuscripts, paintings, stained glass, and other treasures for safekeeping and took additional necessary steps to secure their property. Incendiary bombs were a particular concern, and firefighting equipment—static water tanks and trailer pumps—was set up in all the colleges. Everyone, from senior and junior members to the domestic staff, underwent training to learn how to operate the equipment, 244



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and fire drills became a commonplace feature of college life. The colleges also erected air-raid shelters and organized teams of dons and students to participate in all-night watches in term and during vacations. In addition, university buildings needed air-raid protection, and students who volunteered, both male and female, usually received a small fee to serve as firewatchers, and, if they stayed on during vacations, were entitled to free residence at their colleges. The work was not onerous, although it did require students to sleep on the premises during their duty rotation. Nina Bawden recalled her week at a university museum where she spent uneasy nights sleeping between a mummy in a glass case and a stuffed alligator.2 The most vivid fire-watching memories, however, belonged to those stationed on the roofs of the Bodleian or the Radcliffe Camera for, echoing Grace Hadow, they were able to see an Oxford lit only by the moon and stars, just as it might have looked in medieval times. Luckily, no bombs ever fell on Oxford, but many alerts were sounded as German bombers passed nearby en route to other targets.3 The sheer number of people who poured into the city after September 1939 also changed the character of Oxford. Civil servants from Whitehall, medical and military personnel, European refugees, and evacuees from London and southern England all competed for space with the local residents.4 A. L. Rowse, a resident don during the war years, estimated that the population grew by about 20 percent, which seriously strained the city’s resources. Oxford lost its provincial air, and Rowse commented that “one notices this very much in the café life of the town, which has become distinctly more continental.” He also pointed out another major difference between Oxford in peace and Oxford in the new war: “The life of the streets, even in the old centre of the town, has ceased to be dominated by the University.”5 When war began, many government departments decamped from London to outlying areas, and Oxford, with numerous college buildings that could be requisitioned and easily converted into administrative offices, was a convenient place to set up operations. The political intelligence unit of the Foreign Office moved into Balliol, the Ministry of Transport took over part of Merton, the Ministry of Home Security transferred to Queen’s, and the War Office established its intelligence corps at Oriel. When the Ministry of Food settled its controllers of fish and potatoes in part of St. John’s, the college became known as “the biggest fish and chip shop the world has ever seen.”6 The government takeover of sections of the men’s colleges displaced many undergraduates, but a cooperative system arose whereby colleges that had escaped requisition stepped in to offer these undergraduates accommodation. Somerville’s governing body feared that, because of the college’s proximity to the Radcliffe Infirmary, it would again be asked to give up its buildings, as it had in the previous war. After tense negotiations with the Ministry of Health, however, Somerville had to surrender only

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West Building, a residence hall. The building was used primarily to house Radcliffe nurses, but one section, which could be shut off from the rest, was reserved for male medical students and thereafter became known as the “Isle of Man.”7 Although Somerville was spared the wholesale disruption of 1915, the loss of West meant that a number of students had to be accommodated elsewhere. St. Hugh’s was not so fortunate as Somerville. The whole college, with the exception of the library, was taken over as a hospital for treating head wounds. Temporary buildings were also erected on the grounds, destroying much of Annie Rogers’s beloved garden. Students and staff were dispersed to seven hostels around the city, and only the librarian could now use the address St. Hugh’s College. Even before Britain went to war, European and Jewish refugees had been seeking asylum there, and many found their way to Oxford. For those who were scholars, the university offered as much support and employment as it could. The Oxford University Press employed about twenty scholarly refugees throughout the war and made available its printing and editing services to a number of distinguished German academics.8 Three Czech universities were given study facilities, and Oxford’s law school helped establish a Polish law faculty, which granted its own degrees with an attached Oxford seal.9 Once England entered the war, the university turned to academic refugees, particularly economists, physicists, and medi­ cal scholars, to fill positions left vacant by senior staff members who went into government and military service. Edith Bülbring, a medical researcher from Germany, helped keep the Department of Pharmacology in operation during the war. In 1933, she had been forced to leave Berlin, where she had been conducting postgraduate pharmacological research, because her mother was Jewish. She found refuge in London, began a research partnership with the noted pharmacologist J. H. Burn, and then followed him to Oxford in 1937 on his appointment to a professorship. Bülbring went on to establish an international reputation for her research into the physiology and pharmacology of smooth muscle (the unstriated muscle of internal organs, with the exception of the heart), which led to her election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1958. In 1960, she became a fellow of LMH, and in 1967, the university appointed her to a chair in pharmacology. In the early 1930s, many people in Oxford were deeply troubled about the fate of Jewish scholars in Germany. At Somerville, Helen Darbishire offered temporary appointments in 1934 to two women who had been dismissed from their German universities: Emmy Noether, an eminent mathe­ matician from Göttingen, and Margarete Bieber, a distinguished classical archaeologist from Giessen. Following Miss Darbishire’s lead, the Somerville Council voted in January 1939 to set aside £150 from the college’s research reserve fund to provide research grants and board to one or two refugee academic women who had been displaced from their homeland,



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“choosing specially those to whom study in Oxford would be most valuable and whose future, through this opportunity, is likely to be improved and secured.”10 Thousands of mothers and children from London and southern England were evacuated to the city when war was declared and added to Oxford’s swelling population. Some found temporary accommodation in the men’s colleges before being billeted in and around the city, and Vera Brittain reported that venerable Christ Church had “babies’ nappies drying in Tom Quad for the first time all though its history.”11 Private citizens also took in evacuees, as Dorothy Hodgkin did, when she opened her flat to a mother with two small children. Edith Bülbring, herself a refugee, sheltered two boys evacuated from London in her home for two years. During the blitz of 1940–1941, she also organized weekend visits to Oxford for exhausted air-raid wardens from London so that they could have a break from their almost nonstop duties.12 Military personnel crowded Oxford streets after the Canadians and Americans set up army bases nearby in the early 1940s. Women students were told to be wary of American GIs in particular and to step on their toes if they got too close.13 Students did not always heed this advice, and one St. Hugh’s woman remembered that it was “great fun jitter-bugging with them at totally out-of-bounds dances at the Town Hall.”14 For soldiers interested in what Oxford could offer, apart from its young women, the university established part-time informal courses, which proved very successful. A. D. Lindsay, master of Balliol, who held philosophy seminars for visiting servicemen, was sometimes stymied by their language, as when one American commented, “Well, I guess I swing along with ­B erkeley here.”15

Effects on Students and Dons At the beginning of the war, the university male population declined but not dramatically. In the 1939 Michaelmas term, male undergraduates were still very much in evidence (2,761 compared with 3,750 the previous year).16 The War Office had announced in September that men under twenty would not be conscripted, which, in Vera Brittain’s words, prevented the “heroic but unbiological self-immolation” of 1914.17 They could, of course, volunteer, and those who did were generally either recommended for officer training or urged to remain at university until called up. Most of the men under twenty who continued with their studies knew full well, however, that they would unlikely be able to complete their courses before being called up, and many wondered whether it was worthwhile staying on. The university tried to ease their dilemma by devising a shortened curriculum on which they could be examined and qualify for a special war degree after a period of national service. This degree would entitle them to return

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to Oxford after the war, if they wished, and convert it into a full honours degree. Beginning in December 1942, the situation changed. Manpower shortages forced the government to lower the call-up age to eighteen, and Oxford had to make further adjustments to its increasingly complex rules for wartime academic qualifications and examinations. This new call-up age also greatly restricted the number of men who could enter university. To avoid a drastic reduction in male students, the university introduced a series of six-month short courses for service cadets. Oxford waived its normal entry requirements, and these young men were matriculated, lived in college, and combined study with military training. Many of the cadets who studied at Oxford under this scheme came back after the war to become full-time students. Male dons over the age of twenty-five were in a reserved occupation, but many had signed a national register in early 1939, indicating their willingness to perform work of national service in the event of war. After war broke out, the government lost no time in recruiting men whose skills it needed, such as scientists, economists, and foreign affairs experts. By the fall of 1940, more than a quarter of the university’s senior members were on war leave (sixty in the armed forces and seventy-two in government posts), and Oxford became so concerned about this drain on its teaching resources that it worked out an agreement with the Ministry of Labour. All the faculties (e.g., literae humaniores, modern history, law) were asked to report to the central administration the minimum number of teachers with which they could operate, and the ministry agreed not to offer a civilservice post to any senior member without first consulting the university. Thus, a necessary quota of teachers was preserved.18 Few women students in Oxford left their colleges when war was declared. For one thing, the government made no special demands on university women for the first two years of the war and even encouraged them to carry on with their studies. For another, many women students were not tormented by the feelings of protected isolation that Vera Brittain and others had experienced during the First World War. Now, the war was not just “over there.” In the fall of 1940, Britain came under attack by German planes, and the threat of invasion was very real. Even though Oxford remained relatively sheltered during the war years, most women students did not feel totally cocooned from the sufferings endured by others. Women’s protected status ended in December 1941, when the government, for the first time, applied conscription to unmarried women between the ages of twenty and thirty (except for college tutors). No women students could now remain in residence after the age of twenty, which meant that few could complete their degrees without resorting to the shortened curriculum introduced for the men. A reprieve was granted to certain students in May 1944, when the Ministry of Labour and the Board of Education agreed to allow second-year women students who intended to enter



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the teaching profession to remain at university for a third year. This new regulation complicated the lives of those concerned with admissions calculations at the women’s colleges. If women students, who were expected to leave after two years, could now claim a third year (and those eligible usually did), the colleges would have fewer places to offer incoming candidates because of the quota imposed on them in 1927. After desperate appeals from the women’s colleges, the university passed legislation in 1945 temporarily raising the statutory number of women undergraduates. Most tutors at the women’s colleges remained in their Oxford posts during the war, and it would have been difficult for the colleges to keep functioning, owing to their relatively small size, if many of their senior members had gone on leave. Still, a few were recruited for government work and spent all or part of the war years in London, primarily at the Foreign Office or the Board of Trade. In 1941, Lucy Sutherland, history fellow at Somerville, was one who felt that London was the place to be in wartime; she went to the Board of Trade in an administrative capacity. Joan Carmichael, who was assigned to Miss Sutherland’s section there, remembered her calm demeanor under pressure. Once, as Miss Sutherland addressed a departmental meeting, everyone heard the approach of a buzz bomb and then the ominous quiet as its motor cut out. Miss Sutherland never wavered in her talk, and when it was obvious that the bomb had fallen elsewhere, the group broke into applause as “a spontaneous tribute to her masterly performance.”19 Of the tutors who were directly involved in war work, no one had a greater impact than Dorothy Hodgkin of Somerville, who became a key player in groundbreaking penicillin research conducted by a group of Oxford scientists. In 1929 Alexander Fleming had discovered the bacteria­killing mold that he called penicillin but had found it too unstable to purify for use as a drug. Ten years later, Howard Florey, professor of pathology at Oxford, and Ernst Chain, a biochemist refugee from Nazi Germany, rediscovered Fleming’s work and were able to purify penicillin in sufficient quantities to carry out experiments on laboratory mice and to observe its miraculous power to kill bacteria. After authorities in Britain became aware of this research, they quickly saw penicillin’s potential value in the war, where many more soldiers were dying from infected wounds than from artillery. British chemical companies could not, however, divert their resources from other wartime needs to concentrate on developing a reliable process for large-scale industrial production. In 1941, Florey therefore looked to the United States for help, and the U.S. government responded by issuing a challenge to American pharmaceutical companies to come up with a method for producing penicillin in large quantities. The production problem was solved, and by D-Day—June 6, 1944—enough penicillin was being made to treat every soldier who needed it. When World War II finally ended in 1945, the new miracle drug had saved many lives.

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Penicillin research continued at Oxford even after the drug went into mass production. There was great interest in trying to synthesize penicillin, but for this effort scientists needed first to discover its chemical composition. In November 1941, Ernst Chain turned to Miss Hodgkin, who had already proven adept in the relatively new science of X-ray crystallography, to see if she could use that technique to unlock the complex structure of penicillin. The possibility excited her, and although the work was very difficult, she succeeded in discovering penicillin’s chemical formula through X-ray analysis in 1945. Hodgkin’s work was crucial to the development of synthetic penicillin, which, as her biographer Georgina Ferry noted, “made it possible to tailor the drug for particular purposes, and gave us the arsenal of antibiotics that we have today. It was also a notable scientific success, because . . . it was the most complex molecule ever to have been analysed using the methods of X-ray crystallography.”20 Her achievement led to her election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1947, when she was only thirty-six years old. Dorothy Hodgkin’s accomplishments were even more remarkable given her situation. She was living in Oxford with two small children (her second child was born in 1941), while her husband’s job kept him in Staffordshire during the week. She coped by hiring some of the numerous refugees in Oxford as nursemaids, but domestic matters often occupied much of her time. She was additionally burdened with rheumatoid arthritis, which crippled her hands so severely that it must have been difficult to handle delicate scientific equipment with the skill that she apparently possessed. It is ironic that, as Dorothy Hodgkin was receiving national and international recognition for her scientific discoveries, her gender kept her out of the Alembic Club, the university’s chemical society to which members of the chemistry faculty, research students, and undergraduates belonged. Women were permitted to hear invited guests at open meetings but could not attend the informal seminars where members discussed topics of general interest and which were “a great part of the life of the chemistry school.”21 When still an undergraduate, Dorothy was upset to learn that she could not even go to one of these closed meetings at which her own work would be the featured subject. After she became a fellow of Somerville, Dorothy was invited to speak to the Alembic Club on two occasions, but the membership remained resolutely male until 1950. Dorothy Hodgkin was also passed over for a university readership in 1944. The extra money—£750 per year—would have been helpful, for she was finding it difficult to manage on her small salary as a Somerville tutor and fellow. (Many of her male colleagues combined their college fellowships with university appointments, which substantially enlarged their salaries.) Consequently, she applied in 1944 for a more junior university post as demonstrator in chemical crystallography and finally received the appointment, which brought a welcome addition of £350 a year, in May



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1945. Georgina Ferry, her biographer, dryly commented: “Having kept Oxford University at the forefront of research in the structure of organic molecules for ten years, she became a university employee for the first time.”22

Oxford Women and War Work Many women students who received Oxford degrees between 1939 and 1945 postponed any plans for a career and joined thousands of their countrywomen, including other former Oxford students, to do war-related work. A large number entered government ministries as temporary civil servants and undertook administrative and clerical jobs. When Lucy Sutherland first went to the Board of Trade in 1941, she reported back to her college that Whitehall was “literally swarming” with Somervillians, but representatives from the other Oxford women’s colleges could have said the same thing about their graduates.23 Oxford women with good language skills were recruited to monitor foreign broadcasts or to work in censorship and intelligence. Some who showed an aptitude for codes and ciphers were sent to Bletchley Park, site of the Government Code and Cipher School, where a large group of men and women labored in great secrecy and under Spartan conditions to break communication codes of the German armed forces. (The famous Nazi Enigma cipher, the backbone of German military and intelligence communications, was finally cracked at Bletchley Park.) Daphne Park (Somerville 1940) had amused herself as a child by devising her own codes, a hobby that led to more serious pursuits during the war. She left Oxford with a French degree in 1943 knowing that she wanted to do something more exciting and potentially worthwhile than pushing paper in a government ministry. By chance, she met an old Somervillian who reported that she had joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and was now involved in very dull work. Daphne suspected, however, that her friend’s smug look meant that the work was far from dull, and she immediately applied to join FANY. In fact, FANY was closely connected with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British secret service created in July 1940 to encourage resistance among the civilian population of Nazi-occupied regions and to promote sabotage and subversion. Women from FANY were chosen to work on codes and wireless transmissions, to liaise with secret agents, and to provide administrative and technical support for the special training schools. As part of her induction course, Daphne wrote a paper on codes and ciphers that interested some of her superiors, and she was then taken into the SOE. Her work remained cloaked in secrecy even many years later—she refused to expound on it in a 1989 New Yorker article except to say, “I had a very interesting war.”24

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By 1944, around fifty thousand women wore uniforms of the British armed forces, including Oxford women in the Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS, an offshoot of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps in World War I), the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), and the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). Although women in the armed forces did not go into combat, their lives could still be at risk. In 1941, Home-Student Christine Ogle was reported lost at sea while serving as a second officer in the WRNS. While no women pilots saw military action, they flew for the civilian Air Transport Auxiliary. The ATA was formed in 1938 to use pilots who for various reasons did not qualify for the RAF to transport mail, medical supplies, dispatches, VIPs, and so on around the country. It soon performed an even more vital and urgent role, replacing valuable RAF pilots to ferry planes straight off the factory assembly lines, first to RAF maintenance units, then to the squadrons. During the war, the ATA employed 1,318 pilots, 166 of whom were women. Marian Wilberforce (Somerville 1922) was appointed commanding officer of a women’s pool of pilots for the ATA, and Lettice Curtis (St. Hilda’s 1933) became the first woman ATA pilot to fly a four-engine bomber. Curtis worked as a pilot for an air survey company after leaving Oxford and joined the ATA as one of their first women pilots in 1940. The ATA pilots had no radios or fancy navigational aids; they flew by studying detailed maps of their routes and trying to fly below the clouds so that they could follow the landmarks on the ground. The work was arduous, as Lettice Curtis explained: “We worked theoretically ten days on and two off, but if the weather was bad and there was a hold-up, you very often lost your two days off. It was only at the end of the war that we started getting weekends off.”25 It was also dangerous. The weather could be completely unpredictable, and barrage balloons presented navigational hazards. Since pilots were forbidden to write down the balloons’ locations, they had to memorize their positions and then try to negotiate around them. Lettice Curtis once took off from Rochester in bad weather with poor visibility and only later found out that, by sheer good luck, she had safely flown through an area thick with barrage balloons, moved the previous day from the location she had memorized.26 There were accidents, of course, and pilots, including women, lost their lives. By the end of the war, however, the ATA pilots had safely delivered 309,011 aircraft of more than two hundred types.27 (Curtis continued to fly as a private pilot after the war while working as a researcher in the aviation industry.) Women with medical training served as doctors and nurses during the war, both in and out of the armed services. When war broke out, Janet Vaughan (Somerville 1919) was working as an assistant clinical pathologist in London and had already achieved recognition for her work in



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hema­tology. Since 1938, she had also been part of a self-appointed medical group that studied the problems of storing and transfusing blood in wartime. She would later use her knowledge to direct the most efficient blood transfusion service in Britain during the war. In addition to her blood work, Vaughan was researching the treatment of starvation in the hope of eventually being able to help European civilians and prisoners of war. The most promising method involved protein hydrolysates—protein in soluble form—and she was sent into liberated Europe to test injections of these hydrolysates on people who had suffered starvation. When she found herself in the Belsen concentration camp in 1945, however, she quickly realized that injections were out of the question for the traumatized former inmates, because they feared that every injection would be lethal. Vaughan’s team could not administer the soluble protein orally unless they could camouflage its bitter taste with milk or other flavorings, and they had very few such supplies on hand. It was a nightmarish situation; Vaughan had to select for treatment only those who could be expected to survive, and she described the ordeal as “trying to do science in hell.”28 (Vaughan ultimately became convinced that hydrolysate treatment for starvation was not the miracle cure she and others had hoped but that it could be—and was—effective under certain conditions and methods of administration.) On the domestic front, Oxford women went into industry, often as personnel officers or inspectors. They joined the VADs or worked as volunteers for the Women’s Land Army, the Red Cross, and the Women’s Voluntary Service, which performed important work in the evacuation of mothers and children, civil defense, and social welfare. Women who took on the duties of air-raid wardens and ambulance drivers saw firsthand the destruction caused by bombs and fire. Writer Rose Macaulay (Somerville 1900), who volunteered for ambulance duty between 10:00 pm and 3:00 am so that she could reserve her days for writing, was an eyewitness to the horrors of some of the worst bombing raids on London. She had to take a leave in the early spring of 1941 to be with her sister, who was dying of cancer, and when she returned on May 13, 1941, she discovered that her flat had been completely obliterated. She wrote to a friend: “I am bookless, homeless, sans everything but my eyes to weep with.”29 Never strong physically, Macaulay developed an ulcer and then heart palpitations in the face of her losses and had to resign from the ambulance service. Living through the Blitz only intensified Evelyn Irons’s (Somerville 1918) desire to see the war from the front lines. She had been reporting on bombing raids in her job as a journalist for London’s Evening Standard but was determined to be a war correspondent. Because she knew that General Montgomery did not want women near his battlefields, she attached herself to the First French Army, where she got on well with the commanding general, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. When Paris was liber-

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ated in 1944, Evelyn marched down the Champs Elysées with him. She won the Croix de Guerre in 1945 for her report on the French capture of a Bavarian village, the first woman war correspondent to be so honored.30 Bravery is a word that applies to a number of Oxford women during the war, particularly those who worked on behalf of the less fortunate—Doreen Warriner and Cicely Williams, as well as Eleanor Rathbone, whose work was noted earlier (see Chapter 8). Doreen Warriner (St. Hugh’s) was establishing herself as a promising academic in London when Britain, France, Italy, and Germany signed the Munich Agreement in September 1938, compelling Czechoslovakia to surrender the Sudetenland (with a predominant German population) or risk annexation by the Nazis. Thousands of people in the region, many of whom were outspoken critics of Hitler, fled to Prague and tried to find shelter wherever they could. Scheduled to fly to the United States in October 1938 on a Rockefeller fellowship, ­Warriner canceled her flight and instead traveled to Prague in the hope that she could help. She found the Sudeten refugees desperate to leave the city, for few believed that the Munich Agreement would hold. ­Warriner wrote letters and lobbied her government on their behalf, and on January 4, 1939, the British Treasury allocated £4 million for the transportation and resettlement of five thousand Sudeten families to Canada. Doreen Warriner and her colleagues then worked almost around the clock arranging visas and transport for these refugees, so successfully that only about three hundred remained in Prague when Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia on March 15. Not wanting to leave these people, mostly women and children, to the mercies of the Nazis, Warriner—described as a “brilliant improviser”—hid them until she could lay her hands on enough visas for them all. With the Gestapo threatening to arrest her, Doreen and the refugees left in early April 1939 on one of the last Czech trains to cross into Poland. In 1941, Doreen Warriner was appointed OBE for her courageous work with the Sudetenland refugees.31 Cicely Williams (Somerville 1917) was a doctor with the Colonial Health Service in Singapore, concentrating on maternal and infant welfare, when the Japanese bombardment of the city began in early February 1942. She soon found herself in charge of a hundred sick children with no proper accommodation, food, or water. Moreover, she was ordered to move her charges from one inadequate place to another as confusion reigned and authority was almost nonexistent. When the British commander of Singapore surrendered on February 15, 1942, the Japanese forced Dr. Williams to relocate her children once again, and in desperation she offered babies for adoption to those who wanted them. She also had to leave two babies in a communal grave that had been dug as a reservoir some months earlier, and she recorded later that she could never forget the sight and smell of that pit. Dr. Williams herself came down with such severe dysentery that she had to be hospitalized, and when discharged, she was interned in



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Changi Prison, along with other British, American, and Dutch civilians. The prison, designed to hold seven hundred convicts, by the end of the war held almost six thousand people. Conditions in Changi were primitive and austere but bearable until October 1943, when the Japanese became convinced that spies actively circulated within the camp. They began systematically torturing many of the inmates and cut back on the already meager food allotment. The Japanese Gestapo arrested Cicely Williams on the trumped-up pretext of her being a spy, removed her from Changi, and, over the next five months, crowded her into a series of small cells with men of all nationalities, forced to sit with knees drawn up for as long as sixteen hours a day. The prisoners received only a minute quantity of food and water, and many of the men were tortured day after day. One of her cellmates had lost the use of his hands after they had been tied behind his back and beaten. Defying the order not to move, Dr. Williams repeatedly massaged his fingers until she brought them back to life. On March 25, 1944, she was returned to Changi just as abruptly as she had been removed, where her appearance stunned everyone, for she was stooped from her enforced posture, covered in sores, and weighed less than ninety pounds; her hair had turned completely white. For the next two months, her fellow prisoners gave her as much special care as they could manage. Their imprisonment ended in mid-August 1945, when British paratroopers liberated the camp. A necessary period of recuperation followed, and Cicely Williams then resumed her work on behalf of the world’s poorest mothers and children.32 Vera Brittain’s courage took her in a different direction from the one chosen by these Oxford humanitarians. In 1937, she joined the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), thereby identifying herself as a pacifist at a time when most people viewed war as a legitimate response to fascism. Vera Brittain hated fascism and the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews, but she hated war more. She began publishing in September 1939, at her own expense, a regular newsletter, Letters to Peace Lovers. She also wrote and lectured on behalf of the PPU’s Food Relief Campaign, in which she and others urged the British government to allow neutral ships to transport medical and food supplies to suffering children in occupied Europe. Their lobbying efforts were unsuccessful. More controversially, she wrote a book in 1943 that denounced the RAF’s saturation bombing of German civilians, arguing that the Nazis’ inhumane behavior toward others was no reason for the British government to descend to their level and perpetrate similar atrocities. She encountered much hostility from politicians, the general public, and even close friends for her outspoken views and lost the admiration of many people who had been profoundly moved by her autobiographical Testament of Youth. For Brittain, however, the unpopularity was much easier to bear than the separation from her two children, sent in the summer of 1940 to the United States to stay with friends in Minnesota. She

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hoped to visit her children occasionally, but the government subsequently refused to issue her an exit visa because of her pacifist connections. She did not see her children for three years. When they returned in the summer of 1943, her son John, then fifteen, was five inches taller than his mother.

Wartime Austerities For students and staff who remained in Oxford, wartime stringencies became a fact of life. Food and fuel were rationed almost from the beginning of the war, and the colleges were hard-pressed to keep their students adequately fed and comfortable. Every student received a small weekly ration of butter and sugar, which they had to carry back and forth to meals, and a monthly pot of marmalade, but these never seemed to stretch far enough. Margaret Potter (St. Hugh’s 1944) remembered that, “like a monastery handing out alms to the needy, the College at night put out slices of grey national bread and bowls of cocoa-flavoured dried milk powder which could be eaten in lumps or diluted into a drink.”33 In undergraduate accounts of the period, complaints about the food are common. St. Hilda’s fare was reputed to be the best among the women’s colleges, and Beryl Newport (St. Hilda’s 1939) found Spam, which was new to Britain at that time, particularly delicious. She remembered someone asking, “Do you think we shall still be able to have Spam after the war?”34 Yet, even the catering staff at St. Hilda’s could find no way to make lentil cutlets appealing. At the other women’s colleges, the food was often sparse and unappetizing, and women recalled with loathing the numerous times they faced reconstituted dried eggs, foul-smelling fish, and tasteless puddings with unidentifiable ingredients. By far the most popular place for students to supplement their frugal diet was Oliver and Gurden’s cake factory in Summertown, a suburb two miles north of Oxford’s city center along the Banbury Road. To get the freshest buns and cakes, they had to queue at the factory before it opened at 8:00 am, and a steady stream of male and female undergraduates cycled northward every morning. Apparently, the baked goods went stale very quickly, and according to Nina Bawden, a boyfriend’s affection could be calculated by the freshness of the cakes he offered for tea. If they were still moist, one knew that the boyfriend had bicycled early to the factory before supplies were sold out. “However much he protested his passion, if his cakes had already acquired that familiar, desiccated texture, disintegrating drily on the tongue, he could not be considered really ‘serious.’ ”35 Students often remembered being cold and trying to study in coats or wrapped up in quilts and blankets. Clothes rationing added a further burden when it was introduced in 1941, and to be presentable, women students resorted to sharing clothing with each other, making dresses out of upholstery fabric (which wasn’t rationed), and learning to patch and darn.



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The austerities did lead to one positive consequence, however. The gap between well-off and poorer students ceased to be obvious, for everyone was in the same boat. Regardless of status, they all suffered from bad food, icy rooms, and worn-out clothing. The poet Philip Larkin commented on what he saw as another unique feature of undergraduate life at this time: “the almost-complete suspension of concern about the future; . . . in consequence, there was next to no careerism.”36 Nina Bawden made a similar observation: “Since we expected to be recruited into the services when we went down, we were not fretted by personal ambition. If we worked hard, it was for the fun of working, not to get our feet on the bottom rung of yet another ladder, and that is a rare kind of freedom.”37 In fact, the privations, like the women students’ volunteer war work, helped ease their consciences, for they sometimes felt guilty about going to university in the midst of war. In addition to fire-watching and air-raid duties, women students found a variety of ways to contribute to the war effort during term, such as knitting blankets, working in hospitals, digging victory gardens, making camouflage nets, and taking over the duties of college maids and other staff members when they were called up. Each of the women’s colleges also adopted one of the numerous schools evacuated from London to Oxfordshire, and students devoted many weekends to entertaining the children from these schools, thus giving the teachers a much-needed break. Out of term, women students worked on farms and in offices and factories. Some helped deliver mail and milk, while others nursed, drove ambulances, or served in canteens. Initially, women students undertook war work largely on their own initiative, but many felt that more structure was needed. In January 1942, all the junior common rooms at the women’s colleges resolved that every woman student would devote six hours a week to some kind of work of national service, and most seemed to take the directive seriously, despite the inroads on their valuable study time. (After D-Day, however, war work was no longer deemed compulsory, and students could volunteer as they saw fit.) Some students were involved in specific war-related projects. For example, in response to a government appeal, a group offered themselves as guinea pigs for a medical experiment. The supply of quinine, which largely came from Java, had been cut off as a result of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, and the government badly needed to develop a medication to treat the malaria that was always a threat in jungle warfare. The volunteers daily ingested an experimental drug for up to eight months; beyond a tendency to turn temporarily yellow and orange, they suffered no lasting ill effects. Eleanor Plumer, who succeeded Grace Hadow as principal of the Home-Students, enlisted even more students for a task that began in the fall of 1942. She had persuaded the Morris Motors munitions department to allow women students and dons to undertake the exacting job of in-

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specting fuse caps for munitions. They carried out this work on long tables set up in the Hartland Library, and one Home-Student remembered it as “the most awful thing, sitting there for two hours screwing something up and then unscrewing it, quite the worst thing I have ever done.”38 The Morris Motors authorities had initially been skeptical about this enterprise, but by the time the contract ended in November 1944, the laborers had inspected 6,789,000 fuse caps to the satisfaction of the company and the government.39

The End of War When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Oxford erupted into celebration, even though the war with Japan was still ongoing. (V-J day came sooner than expected, in August 1945.) Bells pealed, bonfires blazed, and excited crowds thronged the streets. Penny Peters of St. Hugh’s was sitting in a café with friends when she first heard the news; they rushed outside, formed a conga line with others, and danced from St. Giles to Carfax. The party lasted through the night, but the principals of the women’s colleges decreed that their students should not be out past 11 pm. Valerie Pitt, another St. Hugh’s student, remarked that “nobody with any sense at all of what was in the minds of the young would have done such a damn fool thing—but, of course, the habitual reaction of that women’s college culture was to look to the proper and respectable conduct of ladies.” ­Valerie chose to ignore the edict and, along with most of her St. Hugh’s colleagues, slipped out after curfew and spent the rest of the night “dodging the dons at Carfax and watching the young men leap in and through the bonfires.”40 (Though Valerie believed that she had outfoxed her principal, it is possible that Miss Gwyer knew what was going on and even expected that her students would not be safely tucked away in college during the festivities in town.) Oxford, left mercifully intact throughout the war, managed to restore a semblance of normality fairly rapidly. Government departments began packing up for the return to London, leaving colleges that had been partly occupied free to prepare for the return of new undergraduates and exservicemen and servicewomen. Water tanks and air-raid shelters were removed from college gardens, windows and doors were uncovered once more, and college treasures were brought out of hiding. With considerable difficulty, St. Hugh’s, which had been used as a wartime hospital, moved back into college buildings in time to receive incoming students for the first day of Michaelmas term in October 1945. Only a few weeks before, the army medical staff had vacated the premises with little advance warning, leaving behind buildings unfit for student habitation. Miss Gwyer and her staff responded heroically to the challenge. They gathered a team of workers to clean and redecorate, including German



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prisoners-of-war who had not yet been sent home, while plumbers and electricians tried to repair basic services. Students returned to a pervasive smell of antiseptic, but they were once again a coherent unit and not scattered over the city in temporary hostels. Unfortunately, the wartime buildings erected in the garden remained standing until the summer of 1952, when the gardens were finally restored to their prewar glory.41 Though St. Hugh’s suffered more damage than most other colleges, the university and city as a whole were thankful that Oxford came through the war relatively unscathed. Gratitude was, of course, greatly tempered by the knowledge that promising young people had died. Still, there was not the bereft feeling of 1918 that a whole generation had been lost. The vice-chancellor of the university expressed the thoughts of many in a statement published on May 10, 1945: We have much to be specially thankful for in Oxford. The loss of life among our past and present members, serious enough, has been much less than in the last war. In a world where devastation has been widespread, our historic buildings, monuments and libraries have escaped without a scar. . . . Naturally at this moment we look back to the past. It is even more important to look forward to the future, which brings us difficulties and problems yet graver than those which we have faced and solved. . . . It is for us, the living, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work.42

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O

xford officially marked the end of war with a meeting of convo  cation on October 25, 1945, to confer honorary degrees on a dis  tinguished group of war leaders, both military and civilian. Those admitted to the degree of Doctor of Civil Law were Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, chief of the imperial general staff; General Mark Clark, commander-in-chief of Allied forces in Italy; General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces; Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg, governor-general elect of New Zealand; Lord Gowrie, former governor-general of Australia; Jan Hofmeyr, deputy prime minister of the Union of South Africa; Professor Max Huber, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, commander of the British Eighth Army in Africa, Sicily, and Italy; Sir Arthur Tedder, marshal of the RAF; Sir John Tovey, admiral of the fleet; and John Winant, U.S. ambassador to Britain. A large assembly of men and women gathered in the Sheldonian to await the ceremony. “When the procession of the honorands entered, led by the public orator with General Eisenhower at his side, great cheering rose from all parts of the House,” the Times reported on October 26, 1945. One by one, Eisenhower first, the vice-chancellor greeted the honorees, and the public orator offered a tribute in Latin. Afterward, the vicechancellor led the guests to a reception in New College, hosted by senior members of the university. In the same article, entitled “Sword and Gown,” the Times reflected on the significance of a scholarly institution receiving wartime leaders into its ranks of honorary doctors. The university, as a body of men dedicated to the pursuit of the timeless values of the mind and spirit, the good, the beautiful and the true, pays tribute to the men by whose valour and devotion in the emergency of space and time the quest of those eternal things remains possible. . . . The scholars, moreover, are proud to recognize that their honoured

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guests have set a shining example in the world of the same virtues of selfless service to the common weal that are taught with supreme force and simplicity by the masters of the classic tradition they guard—by Homer and Thucydides and Plutarch, by Cicero and Virgil. Having honored the men described by the Oxford Magazine as “the saviours of our way of life,” the university could once again turn its attention to scholarly endeavors. At the same time, Oxford had to focus on the mundane but pressing issue of how to meet the material needs of postwar students.

Postwar Problems Before the 1945 fall term, university authorities were not able to predict just how many undergraduates would be in residence, because the War Office could give them no firm timetable for its discharge of service personnel under its various release schemes. By October 1945, however, it became clear that the university would be operating with a large undergraduate population. The colleges swarmed with demobilized men and women who had returned to complete their war-interrupted degree work or were matriculating at Oxford after deferring their entrance so that they could undertake war work. They jostled for space with incoming first-year students who had been too young for national service and were coming up to university straight from school. By the end of the academic year, Oxford had 3,447 men and 1,074 women (a total of 4,521) on the books as students.1 This number was in sharp contrast to the previous year’s total of 2,174 students (1,247 men and 927 women) and only slightly less than the prewar 1938–1939 total of 4,600 (3,750 men and 850 women). Nina Bawden, who began her studies at Somerville in 1943 and was in her final year by 1945, felt invaded by the returning servicemen and women: “Colleges where we had previously known almost everyone were full of elderly strangers; the Radcliffe Camera, so comfortably adequate for its reduced wartime population was busy as a mainline station at rush hour.”2 Although Nina was struck by the contrast between the 1944 fall term and that of 1945, she had left Oxford before the even more dramatic increases of 1946–1947, when undergraduate numbers jumped to 6,680 (5,559 men and 1,121 women), and the continuing growth that saw the university full to bursting by 1949–1950, with 7,323 students (6,260 men and 1,063 women). The quota established in 1927 had restricted the number of women students to 840, but the university passed a statute in early 1945 that allowed the women’s colleges to increase their statutory number so that they could accept a certain number of freshmen and still be able to accommodate those returning to complete studies curtailed by the war.

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According to a Times report of 1945, Oxford “does not contemplate any permanent increase in the number of the woman undergraduates when the emergency is over.”3 Some of the increase could be attributed to educational funding provisions put in place after the war. Under the Further Education and Training Scheme (FET), the government awarded grants to ex-service personnel whose higher education had been interrupted or postponed by the war, although men received the majority of the grants. So many ex-service members took advantage of this funding that by 1947 more than half of Oxford’s resident students were there on FET grants. In addition, the Education Act of 1944 removed financial barriers for young men and women who wanted to go to university so that most of those who qualified for admittance could secure grants from state or local education authorities to cover their fees. For years, the expense of an Oxford education had limited the number of students who applied to get in, but with cost no longer an overriding concern, the pool of prospective university students greatly expanded. (By 1951, 82 percent of Oxford’s undergraduates in residence received some form of financial aid, as opposed to about 53 percent in 1939.)4 The inflated undergraduate population strained Oxford’s ability to meet its needs, because teachers, reading materials, and accommodations were in short supply in the immediate postwar years. Many dons who had served in the armed forces or had been employed as temporary civil servants did not secure an immediate release to return to the university, which left Oxford’s teaching staff depleted for some time. Margaret Jacobs (St. Hugh’s 1942) remembered standing in line with other students hoping to book tutorials with dons who were trying to squeeze them into “hopelessly overcrowded timetables.”5 Wartime paper rationing resulted in few new textbooks being printed, and publishers were slow to get their presses moving again to meet the concentrated demand. In 1946, the Times described the scene in Oxford bookshops: “Like locusts on an already stricken field, fiercely competing undergraduates carry off the last relics of the utterly inadequate provision of published books.”6 Vera Brittain wrote that “so marked was Oxford’s share of the world-wide book famine that queues formed before the libraries opened, and in five minutes every seat was filled.”7 Where to house the flood of undergraduates became one of the university’s most pressing problems, and reports of Oxford’s housing woes occupied much newsprint in the late 1940s and 1950s. The accommodation at men’s colleges had been overburdened for some time, and even before the war, one-quarter to one-third of all resident male undergraduates were forced to live outside college in licensed lodging houses for at least some of their university years.8 The housing problem became even more serious after 1945. The men’s colleges responded to the crisis by dividing exist-



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ing student rooms into smaller bed-sitters (a combination bedroom–living room that was the norm for women students), converting every possible space within college walls for student use, and acquiring outside buildings and property. In the end, however, more male undergraduates than in the prewar years had to move out of college. The women’s colleges were not as badly overcrowded as the men’s, ­owing in part to the 1927 limitation statute. With the quota tem­po­rarily relaxed, however, the women’s colleges faced increased numbers. Space was at a premium, and not all students could live in. Some were farmed out to hostels that had been either leased or purchased by their college, while others settled into approved lodgings with landladies in the town. By 1949–1950, the peak of the postwar student boom, approximately 52 percent of all undergraduates, both male and female, lived in lodgings.9 The housing crisis proved to be a particular nightmare for Eleanor Plumer, the principal of the Society of Oxford Home-Students (now renamed St. Anne’s Society).10 With no residential buildings of its own, the society had long depended on the hostess system to house the bulk of its students. These hostesses lived primarily in large North Oxford homes once kept up by a plentiful supply of servants, but, even before the war, men and women had begun leaving service to take better-paying jobs elsewhere. The war only intensified the difficulty of obtaining domestic help. Rationing and fuel shortages added to the burden of running a big house, and many hostesses felt unable to cope. Many of the larger homes were converted into flats, and hostesses willing to take in students dwindled, despite Miss Plumer’s efforts to bolster their spirits and “put some stuffing into them.”11 She knew when a battle was lost, however, and accepted that the hostess system was largely a relic of the past. Facing this reality, Miss Plumer became convinced that the society needed to acquire its own hostels, beyond those run and financed by religious orders. But the society had little spare cash. Therefore, Miss Plumer and old student Ivy Williams bought and furnished a house at 11 Bradmore Road in North Oxford, which opened as St. Anne’s House in the fall of 1945 and was recognized as a hostel by the Delegacy of Lodgings the following January. Over the next few years, St. Anne’s used part of a significant bequest (see Appendix 6) to acquire three more houses close to the property on which the library had been built so that by 1950, 213 of the society’s 257 students lived in hostels controlled by St. Anne’s. Along with many of the other men’s and women’s colleges, St. Anne’s also undertook building projects within the decade after the war, but the housing shortage remained acute for many years. (Appendix 6 provides more detail on the building projects of the women’s colleges.) Wartime austerity still gripped the Oxford that students moved into in 1945, in common with the rest of England. Those who had hoped that the end of war would spell the end of rationing were doomed to disappoint-

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ment. In fact, rationing became even more severe after 1945 than during the war years as the newly elected Labour government stressed that, for a time, the country needed to concentrate on exports, not imports. A 1946 editorial in the Daily Mirror warned that “it would be unwise to expect a large flow of goods for individual consumption in this country,” adding that “the first and essential task which faces this nation is to get on its feet by means of the export trade. To live, to pay our way and to regain our position in the world, we must sell our goods abroad.”12 In the meantime, the British public had to endure shortages of consumer goods and rationing of food, fuel, and clothing, which continued even into the 1950s. What food rationing meant for Oxford women students was that the standard of meals served in college or in hostels sank even lower than during the war years. The St. Hilda’s kitchen had earned a good reputation during the war for the quality of food it produced, but postwar students found it no longer praiseworthy. Irene Mary Davis (St. Hilda’s 1944), convinced that the food in college was “more meagre than rationing justified,” remembered with bitterness a college lunch during finals. After completing a three-hour examination paper in the morning and having another to write in the afternoon, she and other examinees were given no more sustenance for lunch than “one slice of toast topped with a mixture of dried egg and dried herbs.”13 Five years later, Cecilia Green (St. Hugh’s 1949) fared no better at her college: “A particular memory is early evening dinner consisting of one pilchard [a small sardinelike fish] and one apple.”14 Cecilia did add, however, that meals improved before her three years were over, as a result of the easing of some restrictions on food. Most students had become so used to food rationing they forgot that not everyone lived under the same conditions. While an undergraduate at Oxford, Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in under four minutes, captained an Oxford and Cambridge track team that traveled to the United States in 1949 to compete with men from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell. “My team saw food that they had never seen before, hadn’t seen for seven years—I watched them start off their breakfast with a pint of milk, then steaks and ham and eggs followed by lashings of toast and marmalade.”15 He realized that the team would soon be unable to walk, much less run, after such prolonged gorging, and he was suspicious that their hosts were counting on that very fact. Bannister then introduced his own rationing system for his men, which though not popular was grudgingly accepted. Heat was also in short supply in Britain. The coal industry was in a depleted state by the end of the war, and the minister of fuel and power predicted coal shortages and power cuts. He had hoped that there would be enough coal to sustain the country through an average winter, but a freak blizzard in the winter of 1947 paralyzed the nation. Snowdrifts up to



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fourteen feet high cut off entire communities, and on one stretch of road in Lincolnshire, six hundred vehicles were stranded end to end.16 Even if the nation had possessed an abundance of coal, there was no way to move it, with the railroad tracks impassable and roads closed. Industries shut down for lack of power, and in homes all over Britain, electric fires had to be switched off between nine in the morning and noon and from two to four in the afternoon.17 Joyce Gilmore (St. Hilda’s 1945) recalled struggling down Oxford’s High Street knee-deep in snow that winter. A porter took down Joyce’s name and college when she showed up in slacks for a lecture at the Examination Schools—even in such weather, women students were not permitted to appear outside college in trousers. She knew she would be reported and nervously awaited a summons from Julia de Lacy Mann, her principal, but it never came. Instead, Joyce was relieved to find that Miss Mann had merely tacked up a sign on the notice board: “Students are reminded not to attend lectures in slacks.” Joyce said the incident was typical of Miss Mann’s ability to distinguish between the serious and the trivial.18 One writer conjured up a bleak vision of Oxford in that postwar winter of 1947: “Hilary Term was suggestive of medieval conditions when in the half-darkened streets people stumbled over frozen snow to seek in lectures some compensation for their lack of books and in lecture-rooms a modicum of warmth.”19 Clothes rationing, which continued until 1949, was a further hardship, especially with most people’s clothes worn out by war’s end. Many could identify with Harold Nicolson’s lament in one of his weekly columns for the Spectator that his clothes had proven durable until the summer of 1944 when “in some wild Gadarene rush, they all disintegrated simultaneously and identically within the space of a week.” He gloomily concluded that by 1947 “all that I shall have left to wear will be my Defence Medal.”20 Women felt drab and shabby in the utility-clothing suits issued during wartime, which resembled nothing so much as uniforms with boxy jackets and square, short skirts. Oxford students, in common with the rest of British women, had grown accustomed to patching and darning their threadbare wardrobes and sewing clothes from nonrationed fabrics, such as upholstery material. Joyce Startup (St. Hugh’s 1944) remembered that she and her friends shared their few good dresses amongst themselves, “worn by everyone in turn without any consideration of colour or fit.”21 They could take comfort only in the fact that everyone else looked the same. In February 1947, Christian Dior unveiled his spring collection in Paris, a style that came to be known as the New Look. The models wore dresses with long, full skirts; tight, curved bodices; narrow waists; and rounded shoulders. Members of the ruling Labour Party, particularly female politicians, denounced this New Look, heralded by fashion magazines as elegant

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and feminine after years of dowdiness, as an extravagant waste of material and an attempt to curtail women’s freedom by luring them away from sensible clothes. Many British women chose to listen to the fashion experts and not the Labour Party. They were tired of wartime thrift, of being told to “mend and make do,” and were more than ready for a touch of luxury in their lives. A writer to the Daily Mail on March 13, 1948, urged women not to feel guilty about ignoring government appeals to keep their skirts short: “You’d think that after all these austere years no one would grudge us this small token of pleasanter things to come. . . . Don’t let anyone persuade you it’s wanton to covet the sort of clothes they’re wearing in the other cities of the world.” Seventeen-year-old Princess Margaret evidently agreed. When she appeared at a silver wedding celebration for her parents on April 26, 1948, wearing a suit with a tight jacket and an ankle-length bouffant skirt, politicians gave up the fight.22 Two St. Hugh’s students (1947) described the excitement when the fashion spread to Oxford. It “burst in on our coupon-ridden existence,” said Rosemary Tupper, “and we somehow managed to produce the nipped-in waists, flared basques [bodices], and flowing skirts which few of us had any idea of how to wear successfully.” Mary Alexander was equally excited: “It was such a thrill to be able to wear a ‘New Look’ cotton dress, very soft and feminine after growing up in the austerity of wartime.”23 As with most fashions, the New Look was short-lived, lasting only a decade, but historian T.E.B. Howarth claimed that it “did an enormous amount of good for the national morale.”24

Postwar Pleasures Except for the stimulus of a new fashion, Oxford might sound like a dreary place after the war, given the shortages of housing, books, food, and fuel, but almost no one who was there at the time describes it that way. “The late forties were ‘vintage’ Oxford with so many people back from the war . . . and making the most of everything Oxford had to offer,” reminisced Mary Alexander (St. Hugh’s 1947). “A very special time to be there.”25 Peter Parker, future chair of British Rail, came to the university after military service and delighted “in leaving anxiety behind, in being free of uniforms and uniformity. . . . The air seemed super-charged with energy and expectations.”26 Other students of the period recalled the sheer beauty of Oxford, in contrast to London and other cities where bombedout buildings, rubble, and gaping holes were ugly reminders of war. They also remembered the hectic social whirl after men and women poured back to the university, the almost bewildering proliferation of clubs and societies, and the resurgence of drama and music. One notable feature of postwar Oxford was the wide disparity of ages among the undergraduates. This disparity, which was more marked



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than after the First World War, would remain into the early 1950s as wartime students completed their degrees. Robin Day (St. Edmund Hall 1947), a future radio and television journalist, remembered his first breakfast in college when he came up, aged twenty-four, after spending almost five years in the army. On his right was a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant colonel who had been wounded at El Alamein, and on his left was a youth of seventeen who had just left school. “So there were several generations of ­people, which meant there was a great range of talent, and this put everybody very much on their mettle.”27 Marion Graham (St. Hugh’s 1945) noted how worldly the returning servicewomen in college seemed to her: “Some of them had even heard of contraception.” Penny Peters, another St. Hugh’s student (1944) remembered that the university societies “became full of mature minds; men with real opinions.”28 Future prime minister Mar­garet Thatcher (then Margaret Roberts, Somerville 1943) also welcomed the presence of mature students. As one of her biographers noted: “Through her teens Margaret had always preferred older more serious company, and one can see how the new postwar Oxford suited her perfectly.”29 The older students set a tone for the university that differed from that during the period just after the First World War. In the twenties, male undergraduates were often described as being “in no hurry to grow up” and feeling “no need to conceal their immaturity,” and they typically confined their social life and friendships to their own college.30 In the late forties, many of the undergraduates were already grown up, often seeming even older than their years, and had little desire to retreat into a comfortable college nest. Ludovic Kennedy, who returned to Oxford in 1946 to complete his degree after six years in the navy, explained how he felt about being an undergraduate again. While fully intending to enjoy himself, he was also prepared to be more serious about his work than when he first came up in 1938 because “the priorities of a student of twenty-six who has just been released from the services are not those of a boy of nineteen tasting freedom for the first time.”31 He and other older students already had an idea of what they wanted to do with their lives beyond Oxford, and many went on to become prominent figures in politics, business, journalism, literature, and entertainment. In the interval, however, they intended to make the most of their time at university by taking advantage of the freedom Oxford offered to pursue their interests, academic and otherwise. Politically minded male undergraduates gravitated toward the Oxford Union, which slowly revived after the war. The Union barred women from full membership until 1963, but it permitted them to sit in the gallery to listen to speeches and sometimes invited them to take part in debates as guest speakers. The three major party organizations in the university—the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), the Labour Club, and the Liberal Club—were not hostile to women as members or as offi-

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cers, and they attracted a large undergraduate following in the immediate postwar period. Two women who later achieved political eminence took a keen interest in their political clubs and rose to leadership positions. Margaret Thatcher joined the OUCA when she came up to Oxford in 1943 and was elected president in the fall term of 1946. Shirley Catlin (Somerville 1948), the daughter of Vera Brittain, in 1950 became the first woman chair of the Labour Club and, as Shirley Williams (after her marriage in 1955), was a long-serving member of Parliament and cofounder of the Social Demo­ cratic Party in 1981. Even though the Oxford Union was considered the primary training ground for budding politicians, both women later claimed that their exclusion did not particularly bother them. The Union was not serious enough for Margaret Thatcher, who described the debates as “excellent entertainment,” but “rather frothy.”32 Shirley Williams conducted a public campaign for admittance to the Union while a student but confessed that the principle concerned her more than did actually becoming a member. “I recollect feeling that the Union debates were rather boring and that the whole of the Union was rather an elaborate business.” After she won a seat in Parliament as a Labour candidate in 1964, she conceded that the Union would have been “excellent training for Parliament because both institutions were dotty out-of-date gentlemen’s clubs.”33 Drama flourished in postwar Oxford. The Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) came back to life in 1947, and although women students could not join the society (they were not admitted until 1964), they could now act in public performances and be part of the backstage crews. As one OUDS notice stated: “Ladies are not allowed to become members but are most welcome to take part in the Society’s activities and have all the privileges of full membership except those of attending General Meetings and paying a subscription.”34 Women undergraduates interested in the theatre may have found being forbidden to pay for the fun and excitement of participating in OUDS activities a small burden. Shirley Williams, along with a number of other women students, eagerly embraced the new opportunities to act outside their own colleges. Indeed, theatre became such an absorbing preoccupation for many women students that their college authorities grew concerned. St. Hilda’s tutors complained that students spent too much time with the OUDS and the Experimental Theatre Club and wanted to deny them permission to take part in theatrical activities.35 Katy Potter (St. Hilda’s 1953) resorted to using her mother’s name in a cast program instead of her own so that her tutor could not find her out.36 At St. Anne’s, Shirley Sherwood (1952) vividly remembered taking part in a play without permission and the horror she felt on spotting her principal in the front row. She recalled “waiting for the dread summons afterwards” and her relief when it never came.37 The Somerville Council did not want to bar students from participat-



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ing in theatrical performances outright but in 1948 elected to enforce a rule that prohibited undergraduates from spending more than two weeks in rehearsal, “a considerable disincentive to enterprising actresses and producers.”38 Students with literary ambitions formed literature and poetry clubs, tried to obtain posts on one of the two undergraduate magazines—the Isis and Cherwell—or hoped to see their poems published in the annual volumes of Blackwell’s Oxford Poetry. The world of student journalism was primarily a male stronghold, and many of the men at Oxford who shone in that arena in the postwar years became well-known names in literary journalism, publishing, academia, and the media. Women were not entirely excluded, however, and a number of women students, including Shirley Williams, Elizabeth Jennings (St. Anne’s 1944), and Elizabeth Mavor (St. Anne’s 1947), acted as writers and editors on the Isis and Cherwell. In fact, Elizabeth Mavor cited her enthusiastic involvement in journalism— she was editor of Cherwell for a time—as largely responsible for her thirdclass degree.39 Women students of the late 1940s and 1950s possessed a good deal of writing talent, as evidenced by the number who went on to become authors and poets of note (see Appendix 4), but they rarely expressed that talent while at Oxford. The reasons why they remained on the literary fringe while students are not clear, but there are some possible explanations. They may have been intimidated by the large numbers of ambitious male undergraduates, many of whom seemed destined for great things; they may not have found their vocation at that point; or they may have had their attention caught by competing interests. Students could find many ave­nues of expression in the wide range of clubs and societies that sprang up in postwar Oxford. In fact, men and women had so many distractions that the principal of St. Hugh’s felt compelled to address the issue at the 1953 Gaudy. Claiming that the number of undergraduate societies sanctioned by the proctors had risen from 95 in 1939 to over 200 in 1953, she asked: “Can you wonder that undergraduates on coming up are bewildered, and waste time in considering and sampling the claims of rival clubs?”40 The presence of older students changed social life at Oxford. Men and women who had been out in the world seemed comfortable interacting with each other, and in this area, women students quickly realized the advantages of the minority status imposed on them by the 1927 limitation statute. At no time since women had first arrived in Oxford in 1879 had they been on the receiving end of so much positive male attention. With no telephones in college rooms, women received notes from admirers through the college message service, and their mantelpieces were usually covered with invitations. In years past, it would not have been uncommon for women students to socialize together on weekends in college, but Antonia Fraser (LMH 1950) encountered a different situation:

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It was awful to be found dining in hall on Saturday night because it obviously meant that no one had asked you out. . . . If caught alone and explicably loitering, it was conventional to snatch up a book of poetry (Donne was rather smart) and indicate sudden world-weariness, a preference for la vie intérieure.41 On the other hand, male students who wanted female company could not be confident they would get it, given the competition. David Shears (St. Edmund Hall 1944) met with a group in his college once or twice a week for a game of liar dice. “We called this all-male society the Sublimation Club in deference to the deplorable statistic that there were fully seven and one-eighth male undergraduates to every girl student.”42 Young men who had come to Oxford straight from school labored under another disadvantage, according to Margaret Mogford (St. Hugh’s 1947): “They seemed so immature and socially they could not compete with men who had seen war service.”43 Older male students also had an effect on some of the proctorial regulations that supposedly governed their behavior. They had little patience with what they considered outmoded rules of conduct and quietly defied them, particularly the proctorial ban on drinking in pubs and bars and the requirement to wear academic dress if they ventured outside their colleges in the evening. Sensitive to the new situation, university authorities did not come down on them with a heavy hand, and the proctors became less vigilant about enforcing those particular rules. A 1946 article in the Oxford Magazine supported the loosening of such regulations, arguing that if the proctors “take notice of the new standards of responsibility and behaviour visible in the university today, it may well be that they will have become second nature when Oxford life does settle down to a normal peacetime routine.”44 The university eventually concurred, and from January 1950, undergraduates were allowed to drink in public houses and bars and to go out of their colleges in the evening without wearing academic dress. Such a break with tradition brought the usual disgruntled responses from those who liked to see the old ways preserved. A letter from A. R. Woolley to the Oxford Magazine lamented the demise of the academic gown: “Must the university go out of its way to suppress its own identity and merge itself without differentiation in the crowds that distract our streets?” A subsequent letter attempted to squash nostalgic regret by maintaining that the academic gown only enabled the proctors to identify miscreants and that it was preposterous to expect men of twenty-four or twenty-five to spend their evenings in a “ludicrous get-up.”45 Even if they could now drink where they wanted and stop wearing their academic gowns outside college, undergraduates were still subject to



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a number of rules and regulations. College curfew hours, for example, remained in force for junior members of the university, regardless of their age. Men were expected to be in their colleges by midnight, and women usually had to be back by 10:30 or 11:00 pm. Shirley Sherwood remembered mad dashes on her bicycle to get back to college before curfew, “circular skirts flying, cinched waists, gloves—head down and pedaling furiously.” Of course, there was always the time-honored solution of climbing in after hours. Antonia Fraser recalled that whether to throw one’s party dress over the college wall first, before attempting to climb in, or to have one’s escort lob it over afterward “was the subject of much earnest theological discussion at breakfast.” Some women admitted, as did Nina Bawden, that the curfew actually helped them escape, “without appearing too unsophisticated, from unwanted sexual entanglements.”46 By the mid-1950s, the men’s colleges were exhibiting a relatively relaxed attitude toward the hours when women could visit, but the women’s colleges allowed men only between 2:00 and 7:00 pm. By prewar standards, these “men hours” were very liberal, and when a group of St. Hugh’s students requested that these times be extended, Miss Proctor delivered a heavy-handed response: “Your mothers and grandmothers fought for the right of women to come here, and you are only concerned with entertaining men.” Rachel Thompson (St. Hugh’s 1954) reported being angry but added, “I don’t think we would have acted to resist her, though we were not far from a new generation who would have protested much more vigorously.”47 Women students being allowed to entertain men in college introduced complications for both genders. Calling on women students in their own domain could be an unsettling experience, as Edward Lucie-Smith (future poet and art critic) found when he came up to Merton in 1950. In his autobiography, he described the ordeal of going to see female friends who lived in one of St. Anne’s hostels: One could not just walk in. One had to be announced, fetched from the front hall, and then one’s hostess would walk in front of one, selfconsciously shouting the word “Man!” as one passed through the corridors, in order to warn any of the other occupants who might be in a state of undress. Understandably, few of the girls could manage to do this with a straight face, and one’s progress would be punctuated with outbursts of giggles.48 Fraser remembered that, even though her circle of LMH friends all assumed that the others were virgins, blundering unannounced into a friend’s room while she was supposedly entertaining her boyfriend only to tea could severely test that assumption.49 Still, few women were expelled

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for sexual offences, which suggests that most behaved with discretion or were lucky enough not to get caught. Judith Vidal Hall, describing her St. Anne’s class of 1957, probably captured the dominant atmosphere when she remarked that she and her friends “flirted outrageously in an unregenerate sort of way, but never, almost, entered the lover’s bed.”50

Beyond Austerity After the excitement of the immediate postwar years, Oxford may have seemed fairly quiet during the 1950s, but a major transformation—and more pressure toward breaking conventional barriers—occurred between 1950 and 1959. “When the Fifties began, there were no teenagers; by the end of the decade there were suddenly 5 million,” Hall observed. “They had a name, an identity, a definite presence and culture—and presumably purchasing power.”51 The youth culture and rapid social changes that characterized the 1960s did not, of course, happen overnight. Historian Asa Briggs in A Social History of England points to the mid-1950s as a period when, “with increased prosperity, educational opportunity and social and physical mobility, society seemed to be more fluid and less willing to accept old ways.”52 The number of television licenses doubled between 1956 and 1960, and people used their new buying power to purchase cars, refrigerators, and washing machines, items that many of their grandparents had done without. Signs of change appeared in movies, popular music, theatre, and literature. Rebel without a Cause, starring James Dean in a powerful portrayal of youthful alienation, came out in 1955, as did Bill Haley’s “Rock around the Clock,” which many claim signaled the true beginning of rock and roll. Elvis Presley’s first big hit, “Heartbreak Hotel,” was released in 1956, followed rapidly by a string of more hit records in 1957 and 1958. John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger first appeared onstage in May 1956, stunning some theatregoers and critics but exhilarating others with its gritty depiction of working-class life and iconoclastic social attitudes. It ushered in a spate of plays, novels, and movies that featured regional antiheroes at odds with the establishment who spoke the language of the working class. Judith Vidal Hall said that “the accents of Albert Finney or Lawrence Harvey shocked,” but only a few years later Oxford undergraduates wanted to play down their image as an elite minority and to become indistinguishable from their outside peer group in dress, speech, and interests.53 They demanded a larger voice in how rules were administered and grew increasingly critical of the status quo. According to Pauline Adams: “The word ‘student,’ once reserved for women to indicate that they were not members of the university, came to be generally adopted by undergraduates of both sexes to stress their solidarity with students elsewhere.”54



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The rules and restrictions that had long governed the social behavior of Oxford women began slowly to fall by the wayside toward the end of the decade, although women had been finding ways around them for many years. Proctorial rules were eased in 1960, which permitted women to entertain men in college until 10:00 pm, provided their principals did not object. Women’s curfew hours were gradually extended, and in 1964, Somerville became the first Oxford college (not just the first women’s college) to issue keys to its undergraduates so that they could let themselves in if they wanted to stay out past the hour when college gates were locked.55 Such a concession would have been seen as wildly improbable only ten years earlier. Although women gained more freedom in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they still faced a double standard. When, in 1961, a St. Hilda’s freshman was caught with a man in her bed, she was immediately expelled, while her boyfriend got sent down for only two weeks. But sensitivity to such inconsistency was growing. Sympathetic undergraduates organized protests and petitions, even as they acknowledged that their activities would have no real effect. A Times article in 1962 bemoaned the double standard for women but added that the women principals who went along with it were only “carrying out the unsealed orders of society.” The correspondent concluded: “Morally, there is still purdah for women at Oxford.”56 Judith Vidal Hall asked if her generation was the one that missed out; had it been “caught between great events and momentous social changes?”57 While acknowledging that her class of 1957 might have seemed closer to the past than to the future, she recognized that her group was the first to feel the tremors of the coming change. They raised their hems, straightened their hair, discovered the Beat poets, and danced to Cliff Richards, one of Britain’s first pop stars—seemingly minor, mundane, trivial events. Yet, when, in her last year, she and friends saw Beyond the Fringe, the ground-breaking satirical revue written and performed by four young men, she recalled that they “laughed along with their irreverence and knew that the threshold of a new age had been crossed.”58

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he seeds of change had been sown, and during the 1950s, rapidly and with little opposition, Oxford did away with a number of practices that had kept women in a separate category from men within the university. Beginning in 1952, the university no longer segregated women from men in published lists of examination results; henceforth, the names of all those taking final schools—both men and women— would be listed in alphabetical order. In the same year, the Hebdomadal Council decided that men and women should be examined, viva voce, in alphabetical order and not, as had been the custom, in groups segregated by sex with men being called first. As a Times reporter noted: “It was thought to be a bad thing that examiners should test the men first, because they might tend to treat the women afterwards either more easily or more strictly, according to their bent.” In 1958, the degree ceremony was altered so that the deans of the women’s colleges who were presenting candidates for degrees no longer had to wait for all the male candidates to be presented before they were brought forward. Now, the women deans would be placed in the presentation lineup with men, according to college seniority. The deans of newer men’s colleges would be ranked behind the women. The Oxford Magazine called the gesture “humane and timely” and said that the hardship of sitting through the entire degree ceremony will “no longer fall with relentless regularity on the same small group of colleges.” Although these changes may not appear highly significant, to Pauline Adams they were positive indications of “the gradual absorption of the women’s colleges into the mainstream of university life.”1

Increased Self-Reliance The women’s colleges sought to change as well. In the early 1950s, Somerville, LMH, St. Hilda’s, and St. Hugh’s indicated their desire to become more fully part of the university by revising their constitutions to achieve self-governance along the pattern of the men’s colleges. Now, their governing power would be vested in the principal and fellows and not in councils with outside members. The colleges made the change with the full support and encouragement of the men who sat on their councils and who had 274



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been invaluable for their expertise and advice. Under the new governing system, old members of the colleges who had been elected to the councils also had to give up their seats. Many regretted this break with the past, but most believed it was now time for the women’s colleges to demonstrate self-reliance. St. Anne’s Society, which from its inception as the Society of Oxford Home-Students had maintained a unique status as a noncollegiate body, also took steps in the early 1950s that brought it more in line constitutionally with the four women’s colleges. Mrs. Amy Hartland, who had emerged as a benefactor to the society in 1929, died on October 2, 1945, and left almost her entire estate to St. Anne’s Society, which amounted to about £80,000. With this largesse, St. Anne’s delegates felt they could go ahead with plans to add on to the library block, which had been on hold since the library was completed in 1938. By 1952, the society had on one site—Hartland House—a library, administrative quarters for the principal and staff, teaching rooms, and junior and senior common rooms. The bequest also enabled delegates to buy three more hostels for student accommodation, all within a reasonable distance of Hartland House. St. Anne’s now owned considerable property and had an income from its trust funds, but as a delegacy of the university, this property and income were subject to university regulations. In 1950, Oxford introduced new financial procedures that would create hardships for St. Anne’s, and the idea took hold that the society should cut itself loose from the university and press for collegiate status. In a letter to old students, Eleanor Plumer outlined the reasons she and the tutors felt the time had come to press for incorporation. One reason was to maintain control over their finances and property. Another was to strengthen the position of the tutors. Under the delegacy administration, only four of the nine tutors could serve on the governing body, and they could not adopt the title of fellow, as did the tutors at the four residential women’s colleges. St. Anne’s tutors keenly felt the difference in status, particularly when they submitted publications and could identify themselves only as tutors of a society. In addition, just as there had been misconceptions about the name Home-Students, so there were misunderstandings about whether St. Anne’s Society maintained the same standards as the other women’s colleges. Miss Plumer assured old students that, in important respects, St. Anne’s was equal to its Oxford sisters. St. Anne’s entrance examination was rigorous enough for a college, the qualifications for principal met necessary requirements, the buildings were suitable for students, and a new constitution would provide for a visitor and reform the governing council in a way that would be similar to the other women’s colleges.2 Not everyone connected with St. Anne’s agreed that it should become a college. Ruth Butler, longtime standard-bearer of the Johnson tradition, ended her history of the Home-Students and St. Anne’s with this warning: “Much that is valuable and irreplaceable may be sacrificed on the altar of

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uniformity.”3 Such arguments did not deter Miss Plumer. Over the next couple of years, she demonstrated her skill as a patient campaigner and tactician (she was a field marshal’s daughter) by countering objections and continuing to negotiate for incorporation as a college. Her work paid off; Congregation approved incorporation on July 26, 1951. The next step was to secure the consent of the king, but his ill health and subsequent death on February 6, 1952, delayed the process until April 29, 1952, when the new queen, Elizabeth II, signed the charter of incorporation. On June 2, 1952, the Council of St. Anne’s College met for the first time. Nine tutors of the old society (four who had served under Miss Hadow and five appointed under Miss Plumer) became official fellows of the college and, as such, were entitled to membership on the council. St. Anne’s had not attained complete self-governance, however, for five outside members were also elected to the council—men who had served as delegates when St. Anne’s was under university control. By including them on the governing board, the new college acknowledged that it valued tradition and that it still needed their wise counsel and advice. With the consent of Miss Plumer and her family, the college also adopted the Plumer coat of arms, which bore the motto Consulto et Audacter. Translated “Deliberately and Boldly,” the motto summed up Miss Plumer’s tireless and determined efforts on behalf of St. Anne’s. Although not completely selfgoverning, the new college had taken the necessary steps toward achieving full collegiate status.

Abolishing the Quota A momentous shift occurred in 1957, when Oxford abolished by statute the quota on women students that had been imposed in 1927. There had been signs that the university’s position on the quota was weakening. Oxford had relaxed the quota in 1945 so that the women’s colleges could accept both new students and returning students whose education had been postponed by the war, but the concession was meant to be only temporary. Though increased numbers presented challenges for the Oxford women principals, their dependence on fee income made them fearful of a return to the statutory maximum. They jointly appealed to the authorities to change the 1927 statute so that they could accept a gradual rise in numbers. The Hebdomadal Council agreed to propose an increase of twenty students for each society, which would raise the maximum number of women students from 840 to 970 and allow the four residential women’s colleges to accept 180 students and St. Anne’s 250. In a crowded meeting of Congregation on January 27, 1948, Austin Lane Poole, president of St. John’s College, put forward the case for an increase, pointing out that it would not affect the desired proportion of women to men (about one in five at that date) and that it would allow the women’s colleges “to regulate the progressive decline of their numbers from the present large total due



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to the intake of students from the services.”4 Sir Richard W. Livingstone, president of Corpus Christi, moved an amendment to postpone the decision for five years because he worried that more women in Oxford would mean fewer lodgings for men. A. H. Smith, warden of New College, and Julia de Lacy Mann, principal of St. Hilda’s, spoke against the amendment, arguing that women students did not cause the housing shortage and that the women’s colleges badly needed the additional income from student fees. The proposed amendment was soundly defeated by 228 votes to 11, and the original proposal passed, which was considered a triumph for women. In 1952 and 1953, further small increases were put forward, and each proposal passed through Congregation with no debate. Oxford finally closed the chapter on quotas by abolishing the limitation statute completely on January 29, 1957. Sir Maurice Bowra, warden of Wadham, spoke in Congregation on behalf of women, condemning the restrictions as “foolish, out of date, and finicky.” He encountered no opposition. Janet Vaughan, principal of Somerville, attended the meeting in Congregation and commented afterward: “This is an historic occasion. In a world which seems to do nothing but erect barriers, it is a very great pleasure to see one knocked down.”5

Making Room All the principals of the Oxford women’s colleges opposed the quota system on principle, but in truth, they could not accommodate a larger influx of students without embarking on expensive building projects and hiring more staff. Even before the quota was officially ended, the principals were trying to cope with steadily increasing numbers of undergraduates and limited funds to take care of them. They had managed just to keep their heads above water financially after the war by raising student fees, renting out their premises to conferences during vacations, and continuing their long practice of careful economy. These measures did not generate enough money to keep their existing buildings in good repair, however, much less to build new ones. The principals did not want to increase their dependence on hostels because they were difficult to acquire in crowded Oxford and, once acquired, were expensive to maintain. Relying on hostels also laid the women’s colleges open to the charge that they were indeed competing with men for scarce accommodations, and the women’s authorities wanted to allay these fears by trying, as much as possible, to house their students in college. Consequently, they felt they had no choice but to plan building programs, even though their financial situation was not promising (see Appendix 6 for a detailed description of the building projects carried out by each college during the 1950s and 1960s). Even as the women’s colleges tried to find sources of funding for their individual building projects, the five principals banded together in 1958 to

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launch a joint public appeal for money to enable them to buy land, erect buildings, and endow fellowships. In a letter to the Times on June 20, 1958, the principals said that they applauded the removal of limitations on the number of women undergraduates but that they were severely handicapped by lack of capital to be able to accept all “the able young women who are clamouring to enter our doors.” They asked for support “among those who believe that university women are no less essential to the community than university men.” The published appeal met with two sharp letters of disagreement, which appeared in the Times on June 24, 1958. Mr. S. J. Rogers argued that higher education was wasted on girls. Out of ten female undergraduates, he maintained, only one would eventually prove useful to society. The other nine were at university to get husbands, please their parents, or amuse themselves. Moreover, two would be unable to pass any examinations they took, two more would marry as soon as they graduated, and one would take a job for which her degree was useless. The Irish writer Sir Shane Leslie suggested in his letter that if the women’s colleges concentrated on domestic courses that related to cooking, childcare, and fashion, “all of which would help to rebalance our topsy-turvy times,” they could count on the support of many fathers and bachelors. These two letters provoked strong responses, published in the Times on June 26. Hilda M. Stowell wrote that “whenever higher education for women becomes the subject of public discussion some dodo of a man raises his antique English head and spits vulgar abuse at women in general.” Several letter writers disputed the claim that two out of every ten women failed examinations. Jenifer Hart, St. Anne’s tutor, stated that only 2 women out of 310 had failed their final examinations the previous year, while the failure rate among men was about 75 out of 1,700. Others derided a purely utilitarian view of education or the notion that university was wasted on women who married shortly after graduation. William Caro maintained: “The more university places for women the better. An increase in the number of graduate-wives may well lead to an increase in the number of informed husbands!” Pragmatically, the principals recognized that the timing of their appeal letter was not propitious. The university had launched a public appeal the previous June for £1,750,000 to repair and restore its ancient buildings, a category that did not apply to the buildings of the women’s colleges. The women’s appeal languished while the university’s prospered. Only thirteen months after it was announced, the Oxford Historic Buildings Appeal met its goal, but the university kept the appeal open because estimates indicated that more money would certainly be needed once the renovations got truly underway. That the five women’s colleges managed to expand at all during the 1950s and 1960s was a tribute to the optimism, energy, and persistence with which the principals and their governing bodies pursued



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avenues of funding and to the recognition by some outside sources that the colleges were worthy of their support.

Fruits of Their Labors Women students rewarded the faith that supporters had in them by consistently performing well in final examinations during the 1950s and early 1960s. Women did not typically take more firsts than men, although, in 1958, eleven Somervillians achieved first-class placements in their final examinations, and Somerville ranked fourth that year among the twentyeight Oxford colleges (twenty-three men’s and five women’s) in the percentage of firsts. The percentages of firsts and seconds combined were, however, noteworthy. Between 1956 and 1959, for example, LMH gained the highest percentage in the university of firsts and seconds in final examinations. When Sir Arthur Norrington, president of Trinity College, in 1962 created the Norrington Table, a statistical measure of finals results, the women’s colleges had impressive rankings for a number of years.6 In 1964, 1965, and 1966, four women’s colleges ranked in the top ten among the twenty-eight Oxford colleges. In 1967, the women’s colleges occupied three of the top ten places and in 1968, two of the top ten.7 Daniel I. Greenstein believed that women did well in their final schools for three reasons: Because the quota prevented the women’s colleges from dipping as low as the men’s colleges in the ability range; because the women’s colleges pooled their candidates in a common entrance examination and were probably more efficient at identifying and rewarding talent, and perhaps also because women dons brought pressure to bear on women candidates out of a persisting desire to “prove themselves” to the men.8 Women students certainly felt the pressure, and many who attended Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s recalled that they worked quite hard “to justify our precious places.”9 Antonia Fraser remarked that women of her generation were required to write two essays a week, while men got by with writing only one. Anne Bavin (St. Anne’s 1957) agreed that women students were worked harder than men and believed the situation was “partly a hangover from the early days of women’s colleges when they needed good academic results to prove their right to exist at all.”10 Women’s academic achievements did not go unnoticed within the university and in the midsixties led some men’s college to consider opening their doors to women (see Epilogue). Women’s success and the growing ability of their colleges to become more self-reliant, despite obstacles that hampered their development, also contributed to the five women’s colleges achieving full status in 1959.

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Equal Members of the University Throughout the 1950s, the women’s colleges, with the exception of St. Anne’s, had moved toward complete self-governance. The way was now clear to apply for admittance as full colleges of the university with the rights and duties that membership entailed. In January 1959, all the women’s colleges, including St. Anne’s (which had made a frantic revision of its statutes to meet the deadline), formally asked the university for full status. On October 20, 1959, a statute was promulgated in Congregation to give the women’s colleges equal status with the men’s. In an audience where women dons outnumbered the men by five to one—a far cry from the assemblies of Congregation for women’s issues in the past—Sir Maurice Bowra, warden of Wadham and a former Oxford vice-chancellor, proposed the statute, claiming that the university owed the colleges this final act of franchise “for the high standards their heads had set, the academic successes they had achieved, and the high degree of presentability of their charges.”11 The motion passed unopposed. Equal status, which had for years seemed unattainable, now came quietly and quite naturally. By virtue of the new statute, women were eligible for the office of vicechancellor, and Lucy Sutherland, principal of LMH, was named the first woman pro-vice-chancellor along with the heads of Magdalen, Pembroke, and Exeter in January 1960. (Pro-vice-chancellors have the responsibility to represent the vice-chancellor on official occasions.) In a memorial tribute to Miss Sutherland, Dr. Anne Whiteman (Somerville 1937), fellow of LMH, wrote: “I suspect that few events in her career gave her more pleasure than presiding over degree ceremonies in her capacity as Pro-­­ViceChancellor between 1960 and 1969, when she was soberly proud to be the first woman to be entrusted with this historic task.”12 Women could not yet be proctors, the primary disciplinary and administrative officers in the university, because the disciplinary role was not considered suitable for women. (That particular barrier to equality did not fall until 1977.) Instead, Oxford instituted the office of representative of the women’s colleges, so that women could be involved in the administrative functions of the university. A woman, elected annually from one of the five women’s colleges on a rotating basis, would by virtue of the office become a voting member of the Hebdomadal Council and of the numerous committees that dealt with the day-to-day business of the university. It was felt that this privilege would be of great benefit in enabling women to gain experience in and knowledge of university administration. When Dr. Anne Whiteman was elected the first representative of the women’s colleges in 1960, she received a backhanded compliment from the Oxford Magazine: “We may be sure that she will not appear to the general public to confirm the popular view of women dons as dim, pedantic dragons.”13 With full status came full responsibility for college administration.



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From 1959, the principal and official fellows governed each of the Oxford women’s colleges. Dons now had to shoulder many administrative duties along with their academic ones and to become knowledgeable about such issues as hiring, building, and finance. Learning to interpret architects’ plans or understand the intricacies of investment strategies made Jenifer Hart of St. Anne’s feel “like a Jack of all trades and master of none.”14 Philippa Foot cited the pressure of a heavy teaching load combined with administrative obligations as the reason for resigning her Somerville fellowship in 1969.15 Being a member of a college governing body could no doubt be time consuming and sometimes downright irksome, but many fellows valued the experience of making decisions that affected their college, acting on those decisions, and being fully accountable for them. They were the policy makers to a degree, and that responsibility could bring with it much satisfaction.

Looking Back Many women who attended Oxford at the time the women’s colleges achieved full status were probably unaware of the remarkable transformation that had taken place in women’s education there in a mere eighty years. In 1879, twenty-one women quietly entered two modest halls of residence—the nascent colleges of LMH and Somerville—where they lived while attending lectures given by liberal-minded university dons. They were kept largely apart from male Oxford, were strictly chaperoned, and had no participation in the larger life of the university. By the end of 1959, women students at Oxford numbered 1,222, 16 percent of the university’s undergraduate population, and could choose among five colleges that had recently been granted full status. While the Oxford Union and the Oxford University Dramatic Society still banned women from membership, many women students entered into a wide range of university activities and enjoyed an easy camaraderie with the male undergraduates. The early pioneers for a woman’s right to higher education (Emily Davies foremost among them) would have been both astonished and gratified to see the women’s situation at Oxford in 1959 and to know that, in the same year, women made up a quarter of the university population in Britain as a whole. (From a twenty-first-century viewpoint, that figure seems low, but it predates the dramatic increase in women students since the 1960s. By 2005–2006, women accounted for well over one-half of fulltime students in British universities.) When Bedford College opened in 1849 with the aim of becoming the first woman’s college in Britain to offer a liberal higher education, its future was by no means assured. It endured several years of low enrollments, high staff turnover, and dissension among its governing members. Few edu­cational reformers of the day would have dared hope that, in fifty

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years, Bedford College would be established as a college within the University of London and have more than two hundred students. Few could have foreseen that, for the 1900–1901 academic year, 2,670 women would be attending British universities (239 at Oxford) and permitted to take degrees at them all except Oxford and Cambridge.16 The early pioneers faced cultural resistance about whether young women could or should be educated at all. Some opponents of higher education for women argued that women did not possess the physical or mental stamina to endure a prolonged course of study, while others contended that such education would entice women away from their proper roles as guardians of the hearth and promoters of selfless virtue and morality. Elizabeth Wordsworth, longtime principal of LMH (1879–1909), heard her father voice this concern in a sermon he preached in 1884, five years after LMH was established: Any systems of Education which set before women the cultivation of the intellect and the attainment of knowledge as ends for which they ought to strive are grounded on erroneous notions as to what woman is. . . . The only true “higher Education of Woman” is that which trains her to look upwards to God as the Father of lights from Whom cometh every good and perfect gift.17 Early supporters of higher education for women found it difficult to persuade parents and the general public that they were not encouraging women to selfishly put their own interests ahead of duty to others by attending college. They also had to allay fears that education would make women hard and aggressive, thus hindering their chances on the marriage market. In trying to counter objections and fears, supporters often resorted to two methods of persuasion, one based on utility and one based on improving society. For the first, they usually stressed the importance of higher education as a means to an end, namely, that many young women would have to support themselves, usually by teaching, and that they needed training and qualifications to help them earn a living. For the second, they argued that higher education would, in the words of Elizabeth Reid (founder of Bedford College), result in “the elevation of the moral and intellectual character of women, as a means to an improved state of so­ciety.” Mrs. Reid went on to add: “We shall never have better Men till men have better Mothers.”18 When trying to gain support for Girton College, Emily Davies acknowledged that she had to walk a fine line between making the prospect of higher education for women seem desirable so as to attract students and not arousing the anxieties and suspicions of parents. She attempted to do so by stressing that intellectual attainment would be useful in all of life’s endeavors and was particularly desirable for women “on whom it devolves to give the tone to ‘society.’ ”19 Toward the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twen-



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tieth, the idea of university education for women became more accepted, and women students’ numbers grew steadily. For the 1910–1911 academic year, 4,644 women were listed as full-time students at British universities, compared to 17,744 men.20 Employment opportunities for women other than teaching also increased, particularly after the First World War. This development led to a new charge: If women did marry after college instead of entering the workplace, their education had been a waste and a drain on the nation’s resources. (Those who voiced this criticism neglected to mention that marriage bars operated in many professions, forcing women who married to give up their jobs.) This particular objection did not die quickly. In 1965, Christopher McKnight of New College wrote to the Oxford Magazine asserting that more men than women take up careers after university and that, consequently, “it is more useful to educate a secondclass man than a first-class women who marries immediately.” (In a footnote to McKnight’s letter, the editor pointed out that one-third of the labor force was female.)21 At Oxford, an additional battle waged through the years. Some wondered whether women could ever be assimilated into a university that for centuries had catered exclusively to men and had offered these young men an environment, both academically and socially, where they could be trained for leadership roles in their nation and in the world. People who harbored these doubts were by no means all opponents of higher education for women. Ernest Barker, an Oxford fellow who became principal of King’s College London, taught a number of gifted women at Oxford, but in a 1953 memoir he expressed doubts about women being educated in universities where “the women’s colleges are feminine islands in a male sea, half isolated and half besieged with attentions, and the general run of studies and the course of social life is determined by masculine predominance.” He thought the answer lay in establishing a women’s university, “which could develop its own courses to suit the genius of women.” He added, however, that he had never found a woman who would agree with him and so concluded that he was mistaken. “Women dress their bodies differently from men. But they prefer to dress their minds resolutely in the same style.”22 From the earliest days in Oxford, women had known that many regarded their presence there as less than desirable. They sought to overcome this opposition not by protest but by performance. They therefore took special care not to disrupt the masculine community into which they moved, situating their residence halls outside the center of Oxford, and seeking to remain as inconspicuous as possible. But women did want to share in the prestige and resources of one of the nation’s most ancient institutions, and, with the help of leading university men who supported their aims, they worked out strategies to accommodate their needs. “The citadel was to be infiltrated, not assaulted,” and women and their supporters es-

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tablished their residential societies in ways that did not threaten or mimic the men’s colleges.23 In part, they had no choice. The women’s colleges were far too poor to offer more than basic accommodation, but they also attracted little attention by being modest and simple. They adapted quietly and deferentially to the university’s methods, only rarely asking for special privileges, and the university responded by granting concessions over the years and slowly incorporating them into the wider academic circle. At the same time, the women’s colleges gained their own identities and inaugurated their own traditions, and their students were proud to be not only Oxford women but also members of their college.24 The first wave of women students to Oxford found particular delight in intellectual stimulation and personal independence, privileges they had rarely encountered in their homes. Few career options beyond teaching lay before them, but many discovered useful and absorbing work in the social, political, and philanthropic movements of the day. Winifred Peck, an LMH student of 1905, argued that educated women learned to think critically and to distrust the second rate; she held that “a well-trained mind is of value in nearly every walk of life.”25 As more university-educated women went out into the world, barriers to employment slowly began to fall, and Oxford women were among those who boldly entered professions hitherto reserved for men. Having more career choices did not, however, always make life easier. If women pursued careers at the expense of marriage and family, were they denying biology? Would they regret their decision later, when childbearing might not be an option? If they chose marriage and family life over a career, were they throwing away their intellectual promise and professional opportunities? If they tried to combine careers and family, did they end up shortchanging one for the other—or shortchanging both? Yet that education may have sometimes complicated women’s lives by forcing a struggle between the personal and the professional in no way negates the worth of the education itself. As Mary Warnock succinctly put it: Women are human; and if higher education is among those good things from which humans benefit, and to which they may even be thought entitled, then women should have as much of it as men. This principle should be taken for granted. Whatever kind of education is held to be enlightening, useful, good in itself, women should have equal access to it.26 Through neither foresight and design nor conquest and capitulation, Oxford has concurred.

Epilogue

F

or the academic year 2006–2007, 6,371 men and 5,735 women were listed as undergraduates at Oxford. All Oxford undergraduate and graduate colleges now admit both men and women. Only two of the seven permanent private halls remain all male—Campion Hall and St. Benet’s Hall, which are Jesuit and Benedictine establishments, respectively. Clearly, the incorporation of women into the university, which began so modestly in 1879 with twenty-one female students entering unaffiliated halls—not colleges—was substantial by the start of the twenty-first century. Some saw the decade that followed the women’s colleges gaining full admittance to the university in 1959 as “a golden age for the women’s colleges” in Oxford.1 The women’s colleges were encouraged to expand, they found benefactors to help pay for expansion, their numbers grew at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and they responded to the climate of the times by easing the disciplinary strictures to which women students had been subject. Academically, women undergraduates more than held their own with men during the1960s. Women consistently performed well on final examinations, and their percentages of first and seconds combined often put their colleges toward the top of the Norrington Table (see Chapter 18). Within twenty years after the women’s colleges took their place alongside the men’s as full-status colleges of the university, a major transformation occurred within the Oxford college system. Most of the men’s and women’s colleges abandoned their single-sex status and began admitting undergraduates of both sexes. Such a transformation deserves comment.

Mixed Colleges During the 1950s and 1960s, the men’s colleges were aware of women undergraduates’ academic achievements, and it was no coincidence that, beginning in the mid-sixties, some men’s colleges began considering offering admission to women. New College first broached the idea of accepting

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women in 1965, and supporters of the move conceded that they thought women could improve the quality of college admissions. They also put forth less self-serving arguments: to increase the ratio of women to men at Oxford and to promote the idea of mixed education generally, which they considered to be healthy and better preparation for the society that undergraduates would enter. Women constituted only about 16 percent of the student population at Oxford in 1963–1964 compared to almost 38 percent in the British university population as a whole. The Oxford women’s colleges had limited resources with which to expand, so they could not themselves significantly increase the proportion of women in the university. Those who supported coeducation, or coresidence as it was sometimes called, believed that the only way to bring Oxford into line with other universities was for the men’s colleges to accept women. Women at Oxford disagreed among themselves about the New College proposal. Some applauded it. They felt strongly that, because the women’s colleges could not admit the number of women who wanted to attend, a large pool of desirable candidates was being turned away. Other women opposed it. Many worried that, if the men’s colleges began to admit women, they would skim the cream and leave the women’s colleges with fewer able applicants. They also feared that women candidates might prefer the ancient and prestigious men’s colleges to the recent and more modest women’s establishments, even if these same candidates might have doubts about the wisdom of trying to fit into colleges that had been exclusively male preserves for hundreds of years. In reply, those who supported New College admitting women accused opponents of putting the interests of the women’s colleges ahead of the interests of women’s education. The issue was clearly contentious. In the end, the New College scheme failed because the majority necessary to amend the college statutes was not achieved, but the issue of women’s admission to the men’s colleges did not fade away. In 1974, five of the twenty-three (at that time) men’s undergraduate colleges—Brasenose, Hertford, Jesus, St. Catherine’s, and Wadham—opened their doors to women on an experimental basis. The group of five was allowed to accept no more than approximately one hundred women among them annually, and the policy was to be subjected to an evaluation in 1977. The negotiations that led up the 1974 experiment were long and tortuous, and the women’s colleges played a considerable role in limiting the number of women who could be admitted (in effect, helping establish a quota on the admission of women!) and limiting the number of men’s colleges that could participate. Until the 1977 review, the university did not want the matter left to the initiative of individual colleges and hoped to promote a policy of gradual transition. In 1975, however, change in the larger society once again precipitated



Epilogue

change at Oxford. Parliament passed a Sex Discrimination Act, whereby discrimination on the basis of sex was outlawed in, among other areas, employment and education. The act stated that educational institutions must not discriminate on the basis of sex, either directly or indirectly, in the manner in which they treated or admitted students; it did not require men’s or women’s colleges that were exclusively single sex at the time the act was passed to change their statutes. Could the university now prevent other colleges from going mixed if they wanted to do so? An Oxford reviewing committee concluded in 1977 that any such move by the university would create many problems and might constitute an offence under the act. At the same time, the committee urged colleges to restrain themselves and proceed toward coeducation in an orderly fashion. The call went unheeded, and all but one of the men’s colleges, the exception being Oriel, began making plans to alter their statutes so that they could admit women as undergraduates. By the fall of 1979, only three men’s colleges—Merton, Christ Church, and Oriel—had not opened their doors to women.2 If the men’s colleges admitted women, should not the women’s colleges admit men? The women’s colleges differed in their approach to mixed education. St. Anne’s and LMH voted to admit men at both the junior and senior levels in 1979, and in the same year, LMH elected a male principal, Duncan Stewart. St. Hugh’s opened all college offices and fellowships to men in 1978 and began admitting male undergraduates in 1986. Somerville kept its single-sex status until 1994, when it too elected to admit male undergraduates. Between 1994 and 2006, St. Hilda’s was the only allwomen’s college in Oxford. In 2006, the governing body voted to change the college statutes so as to admit men as both students and fellows. The first male undergraduates to attend St. Hilda’s arrived in October 2008. All the former men’s colleges and all the former women’s colleges were now mixed.

Mixed Blessing There is no doubt that the change to mixed colleges increased the proportion of women students in Oxford. In 1966, there were 1,280 women undergraduates; that number rose to 4,000 in 1989 and in 2006–2007 (as noted) to 5,735. The number of postgraduate women also increased, from 300 in 1966 to 1,200 in 1989, and to 3,262 in 2006–2007, to 4,118 men. Over the same years, there has been no comparable rise in the proportion of women in senior academic positions. In 1989, women constituted 14 percent of the academic staff overall, and only 3.3 percent of professors (4 of 120)—percentages much the same as twenty years earlier.3 Over the next twenty years, the figures improved only slightly. In 2007, women constituted less than 25 percent of the official fellows in mixed colleges,

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with women professors still less than 10 percent.4 When the colleges went mixed, the former women’s colleges showed little hesitation in appointing men to fellowships (thereby reducing the number of positions for women), while the former men’s colleges have been slow to elect women to such positions. On a positive note, in September 2007, women headed seven of Oxford’s thirty undergraduate colleges, including three former men’s colleges: Exeter, Keble, LMH, Mansfield, Merton, Somerville, and St. Hilda’s. Debates have been numerous about why women do not secure more academic jobs at Oxford. Male prejudice against women in the senior common room has often been cited, but additional possibilities have been suggested. One is that women may discover other life choices more attractive than engaging in a long struggle to achieve academic security. Another is that women’s careers are more likely to be interrupted by marriage and childbearing. Given the intense competition for academic positions at Oxford, any career interruption can prove a severe handicap.5 Whatever the explanation, the lower proportion of women in senior academic positions is a continuing cause for concern in Oxford. The mixed blessing of mixed colleges applies to quality as well as quantity. Pauline Adams has described the consequences of coeducation for the former women’s colleges as “catastrophic.”6 They began to see a gradual but steady drop in applications, and the pool of stellar candidates for the women’s colleges seemed in danger of drying up, whether the colleges went mixed or remained single sex. The former men’s colleges attracted women who showed academic promise, possibly owing to the colleges’ novelty, prestige, or both, but the reverse was not true: Rarely did able male candidates rate the former women’s colleges as their first choice, in part because they were almost totally unfamiliar with them. These colleges were not only situated away from the center of Oxford but also lacked the long history, ancient traditions, and glamor of most of the former men’s colleges. Rachel Trickett, principal of St. Hugh’s, stated outright that only men who could not get into Oxford by any other route initially chose to enter a former women’s college.7 Academic standing also fell at the women’s colleges. As noted earlier, they as a group earned consistently good rankings during the 1960s on the Norrington Table.8 In 1984, five years after the majority of men’s colleges began accepting women, the Norrington Table showed quite different results. Out of twenty-eight colleges, St. Hugh’s ranked twenty-eighth, with LMH, Somerville, St. Anne’s, and St. Hilda’s also in the bottom ten.9 By 2007, out of thirty undergraduate colleges, three of the four former women’s colleges and St. Hilda’s, which was still single sex, remained in the bottom half. St. Anne’s had improved to thirteenth place, climbing from number twenty-one the year before.10



Epilogue

There has also been concern that women students achieve fewer firsts than men. From 1967 to 1976, when women were still clustered in their own colleges, the percentage of women who achieved firsts was 9.7 percent, compared to 11.2 percent of men. Between 1984 and 1988, when most colleges had become mixed, women’s firsts dropped slightly to 9.1 percent, while men’s shot up to 16.7 percent.11 Daniel Greenstein, looking at final exam results between 1913 and 1986, believes that this disparity may be partly explained by the fact that mixed colleges increased the number of places for women reading for an arts degree, thereby reducing the number of places for males who would have read the same subject. With fewer arts places for men in mixed colleges, the proportion of men reading for science degrees increased. Greenstein explains that this trend is important because 5 to 15 percent more firsts are awarded to science students than to arts students.12 Twenty years later, the percentage of firsts for both men and women was considerably higher, but the same pattern was apparent. In 2006, 358 women achieved firsts (23 percent of the total number of women taking finals), compared to 518 men (31 percent), with more male candidates in chemistry, physics, engineering, and mathematics. Women got a higher percentage of upper seconds (69 percent to 58 percent) and also a higher percentage when upper and lower seconds were combined (76 percent to 67 percent). A number of theories have been put forward to explain why women end up with fewer firsts than men, including Greenstein’s, just noted. Others have argued that men’s scores improved because academically weak men could no longer get into Oxford once the number of women increased. Some have maintained that men “may benefit from the bullshit factor, or a more confident style which produces answers which are deemed worthier of a first than the slightly more tentative, balanced answers produced by many women.”13 Women possibly play it safer on final examinations and so end up with a good second, not a first. Some have contended that Oxford’s tutorial system can be too confrontational, which does not suit the style of learning preferred by women. Still others have fallen back on biology, blaming menstrual tension during examinations or claiming that women are by nature unwilling to be aggressive or competitive in an academic environment. Another explanation may be that women no longer feel they have to try so hard to prove they belong at Oxford—they are not carrying the burden of the past. The debate has not yet ended in some quarters, and I don’t propose to engage in it. The effects of mixed colleges on women’s examination performance are multiple, complex, and controversial and deserve fuller treatment than I am prepared, or am able, to offer. The blessings of mixed colleges may be mixed, but it would be wrong

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to fail to note them. There is considerable evidence that women are living full and active lives in the former men’s colleges (and vice-versa) and that the sexes mingle in healthy and natural ways. At a reunion of Balliol women, ten years after the college admitted women, one graduate summed up what many may think about their years in a former men’s college: We had been reminded that individually and collectively we were intelligent, strong and effective—not because we were quasi Balliol men, but because we weren’t. We had brought our own special flavour to the College; we had made a difference to it as much as it had to us.14 One hundred and fifty years ago, there were no women’s colleges in Oxford. Eighty years later, there were five. Now, there are again none. Women at Oxford are students, not women students—a necessary and inevitable step to full integration. It is no longer appropriate to talk about her Oxford or his Oxford; instead, at the undergraduate level, Oxford has become theirs.

Appendix 1

Principals of the Oxford Women’s Colleges, 1879–1960

Lady Margaret Hall

St. Hugh’s

1879–1909 1909–1921 1921–1945 1945–1971

1886–1915 1915–1924 1924–1946 1946–1962

Elizabeth Wordsworth Henrietta Jex-Blake Lynda Grier Lucy Sutherland

Somerville 1879–1889 1889–1907 1907–1926 1926–1931 1931–1945 1945–1967

St. Hilda’s Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre Agnes Maitland Emily Penrose Margery Fry Helen Darbishire Janet Vaughan

1893–1910 1910–1919 1919–1928 1928–1955 1955–1965

Society of Oxford Home-Students/ St. Anne’s 1893–1921 1921–1929 1929–1940 1940–1953 1953–1966

Anne Moberly Eleanor Jourdain Barbara Gwyer Evelyn Proctor

Bertha Johnson Christine Burrows Grace Hadow Eleanor Plumer Lady Mary Ogilvie

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Esther Burrows Christine Burrows Winifred Moberly Julia DeLacy Mann Kathleen Major

Appendix 2

Some Notable Women Students, 1910–1920

Women are listed alphabetically by college, their names followed by the year (when known) in which they entered college.

Lady Margaret Hall Joyce Bishop, 1915 (1896–1993), was a headmistress for thirty-nine years and became an important figure in the development of England’s secondary school system. Dame Joyce served during a period when education received close governmental scrutiny and provided excellent leadership and guidance at a time of rapid changes. She was appointed CBE in 1933 and DBE in 1963 for her service to education. Katharine Mary Briggs, 1918 (1898–1980), a notable folklorist, produced the fourvolume Dictionary of English Folk-Tales in 1970–1972, along with novels and plays. Always a meticulous scholar with an extraordinary range of knowledge, “she brought to folklore the rigorous canons of criticism that are essential to any discipline.”1 She went back to Oxford after the war to obtain a DPhil degree, and in 1969, Oxford awarded her a DLitt for her contributions to scholarship. Vera Chapman, 1918 (1898–1996), taught in Mozambique, where her husband was a missionary. After his death in 1942, she returned to England and worked as a civil servant between 1945 and 1963. She did not take up the writing career for which she is remembered until after her retirement. Chapman began writing

novels for adults and juveniles and is best known for her Arthurian fantasy series, in which she provided a fresh perspective on traditional material. Kathleen Chesney, 1918 (1899–1976), served as French tutor and then fellow at St. Hilda’s from 1922 to 1952, producing a steady stream of scholarly publications on early French literature. In 1951, she left Oxford to become principal of Westfield College, London, and remained there until 1962, enhancing the college “by her wholesome sense of the ridiculous, her delight in elegance and beauty, and her unswavering integrity.2 After retirement, she took on the presidency of the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature in 1963, serving until 1996. Maude Clarke, 1914 (1892–1935), came to LMH from Queen’s University, Belfast, and took a first in history in 1916. She joined the Somerville staff as history tutor in 1919, remaining there until her early death from cancer in 1935. Her personality was an enigma to many who knew her—warm yet reserved, witty yet austere—but she inspired great devotion from her students and admiration from her colleagues. Clarke was a highly respected medieval historian whose work gained a reputation for “great learning, lightly borne, close reasoning, and clear cut conclusions.”3 Lettice Cooper, 1916 (1897–1994), wrote many novels that were often topical and infused with her own left-wing politics. After leaving college, she worked in her

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father’s engineering firm in Leeds and began her writing career at the same time. A forceful and eccentric woman, she was active in the Labour Party and in PEN International, a writer’s organization. She wrote most of her novels in the 1930s and 1940s, but she lived long enough to see some of her work reissued to good reviews just before her ninetieth birthday. In 1978, she was appointed OBE for her work with the Writers’ Action Group. Evelyn Emmet, 1917 (1899–1980), showed an early interest in politics and was elected to the London County Council in 1924. After a defeat in 1933, she actively worked for women’s causes, participated on numerous local government committees, and served as a magistrate before gaining a Conservative seat in Parliament in 1955. She was created a life peer, Baroness Emmet of Amberley, in 1964 and took her seat in the House of Lords. Her full life as a politician was complemented by her private life as a wife, mother of four children, and enthusiastic cattle breeder. Always immaculately dressed, she was once chided for wearing her pearls during a fire drill at LMH and retorted: “Pearls should never be taken off except in the bath.”4 Mary Lascelles, 1919 (1900–1995), served as tutor in English and then fellow at Somerville from 1931 to 1960. She became a university lecturer in 1960 and then reader in 1966. Because her own standards were so rigorous, she could be a terrifying tutor, but the anxiety and awe of many who studied under her gave way to appreciation for her ability to teach them the meaning of true scholarship. Lascelles took particular pleasure in her 1962 appointment as fellow of the British Academy. Katharine Moore, 1918 (1898–2001), married the year after she got her degree. She concentrated on raising a family until after World War II, when she began teaching English. Her career is noteworthy in that she did not begin

publishing until she reached her seventies and won an award for her first novel at the age of eighty-five. In all, she wrote and edited sixteen works of fiction and nonfiction, including two memoirs. Hilda Prescott, 1914 (1896–1972), was a novelist of limited output, but her works won praise for their “deep scholarship and vivid historical imagination.”5 The zeal for historical accuracy that no doubt hampered her productivity was also responsible for the tiny details that made her novels memorable. The Man on a Donkey, her most famous work, won a literary prize in 1952. Durham University honored her with a DLitt in 1957, and she was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Janet Quigley, 1920 (1902–1987), joined the BBC in 1930 and was instrumental in developing radio’s capacity to promote social action. As producer of the Women’s Hour from 1950 to 1956, she aired programs on subjects controversial for the day, including child abuse, divorce, and homosexuality. She also became chief assistant to the controller of talks and served as president of the International Association of Women in Radio and TV. She was appointed MBE in 1944 for her wartime radio programs to help women cope with rationing

Somerville Hester Adrian, 1919 (1899–1966), worked tirelessly in the field of public health. In 1936, she began serving as justice of the peace in the Cambridge Juvenile Court and was chair of the court from 1948 to 1958. She combined this work with marriage and family and fully involved herself in the career of her husband, E. D. Adrian, a distinguished physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1932 and who became master of Trinity, Cambridge, in 1951. Lady Adrian was appointed DBE in 1965. Margaret Ballinger, 1914 (1894–1980), emigrated with her parents from Scotland to South Africa when she was ten but

returned to England to enter Somerville. When she went back to South Africa after university, she was appointed senior lecturer in history at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1921. Her concern for the welfare of black Africans led her away from academics into politics. Margaret found an ally in William Ballinger, a Scottish trade unionist who came to South Africa to promote a black trade union, and they married in 1934. Together, they undertook pioneering research into the protectorates of Swaziland, Bechuanaland, and Basutoland and published influential studies of the conditions there. When the Representation of Natives Act was passed in 1936, allowing nonwhite people to elect a certain number of white representatives to the Parliament and Senate, Ballinger won one of the seats in 1937 and remained in office through reelection for twenty-two years. She was an eloquent voice for racial equality, particularly after apartheid was implemented in 1948, but her parliamentary seat was abolished in 1960 when black South Africans ceased to have a voice in their government. She continued to fight for the social, political, and economic advancement of nonwhite people until her death in 1980. Lucy Boston, 1914 (1892–1990). See Chapter 11. Vera Brittain, 1914 (1893–1970). See Chapter 11. Muriel St. Clare Byrne 1914 (1895–1983), had an interest in both literature and theatre, and her career bridged both worlds. She served as English lecturer at Somerville and Bedford College, London, but her primary lecturing duties were at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Art in London, where she worked for more than thirty years. She wrote widely on historical and literary subjects throughout her life, producing books, plays, articles, and reviews. Her most significant contribution was to edit and publish The Lisle Letters (1981) in six volumes, which featured 1,700 of the

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surviving 3,000 letters of Lord Lisle, a servant of the crown under Henry VIII. Marya Czaplicka, 1911 (1884–1921), born and educated in Poland, received a diploma in anthropology from Oxford in 1912. A scholarship from Somerville enabled her to go to Siberia in 1914 to study the people of the far north, and she spent a year there doing fieldwork under arduous conditions. Her work was recognized as new and important, and she was elected fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute. Her death by suicide at thirty-six seemed inexplicable to many. A Marya Czaplicka Fund was established in 1971 for Somerville scholars of the ancient world, anthropology, or the natural sciences. Amy Dale, 1919 (1901–1967), became one of the foremost living authorities on ancient Greek meter and in 1948 published an influential book, The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama. From 1929 to 1939, she was tutor, then fellow, at LMH. After a wartime stint in the Foreign Office and marriage in 1944, she went to Birkbeck College in London as reader in classics, becoming professor in 1959. Her Times obituary described her as a “woman of lively sympathies” whose “trenchant style and vigorous delivery made any lecture an event.”6 Una Mary Ellis-Fermor, 1914 (1895–1958), was termed “one of the most versatile literary critics of the writers of the English Renaissance.”7 After university, she spent most of her working life at Bedford College, London, where she taught English literature with a particular interest in English drama. She was elected Hildred Carlile Professor of English Literature at the University of London in 1947 and retained that position until her death. Charis Frankenburg, 1912 (1892–1985). See Chapter 11. Mary Glover, 1917 (1898–1982), served as fellow and tutor in classics at St. Hugh’s between 1927 and 1945. Her experience as a factory worker in World War II led

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to Democracy and Industry, in which she wrote about the demoralizing effect of working on a production line. Glover was named director of social services training at the University College of North Staffordshire at Keele in 1950 and remained until 1965. She became a leading figure in education to link the arts and sciences. Ursula Webb Hicks, 1915 (1896–1985), was a distinguished economist. While a graduate student at the London School of Economics in 1933, she and two colleagues founded a journal, The Review of Economics, which quickly gained an international reputation, and Ursula remained the editor for twenty-seven years. In 1935, she married John Hicks, who would become one of the most important economists of the twentieth century, winning the Nobel Prize in 1972. They both came to Oxford in 1946—he as Drummond Professor of Political Economy and she as senior lecturer in public finance—and regularly opened their home to gatherings of economists of all ranks, nationalities, and ages. Gladys Hill, 1913 (1894–1998), achieved distinction in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. After university, she earned a medical degree in London and studied the use of radium in Paris with Marie Curie. From 1935, she practiced medicine in London, where she established one of the earliest well- women clinics. A fellow of both the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, she is remembered as a perfectionist who abhorred sloppy thinking and as a terrifying examiner of medical candidates. Winifred Holtby, 1917 (1898–1935), had an astonishingly productive life, given that it was cut short by kidney disease when she was only thirty-seven. She made her mark as a feminist, pacifist, and social reformer but, above all, as a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Holtby was also one of the most prolific and successful journalists of her day, regularly contributing articles to Time and Tide, the feminist journal founded by Margaret Haig

Thomas. Although sometimes critical of the academic milieu in later years, she included Somerville in her will, a bequest that greatly benefited the college. Under the terms of the will, Somerville was to receive the profits on any of her unpublished manuscripts that would subsequently be printed, and South Riding, a novel she finished just before her death, was included in her papers. Published in 1936, South Riding became an immediate bestseller. According to a 1999 biography, Holtby’s small masterpiece has enriched her former college by almost £300,000. 8 Evelyn Irons, 1918 (1900–2000), was an outstanding journalist and the first woman war correspondent to be awarded the Croix de Guerre (see Chapter 16). She moved to the United States in 1953, where she became the New York correspondent for the Evening Standard and later the bureau chief for the Sunday Times. Always courageous and resourceful, Irons scooped her fellow journalists (all men) during the 1954 Guatemalan revolution by hiring a donkey and guide to lead her through guerilla territory and be the first on the scene. Margaret Kennedy, 1915 (1896–1967), achieved international fame with the publication of her second novel, The Constant Nymph, in 1924. It was immensely popular in its day and later produced on both the stage and screen. Kennedy wrote fifteen other novels, some of which garnered literary prizes, and a number of plays, but she never again duplicated the resounding success of The Constant Nymph. Julia de Lacy Mann, 1910 (1891–1985). See Appendices 5 and 6. May McKisack, 1919 (1900–1981), returned to her college in 1935 as lecturer in history, becoming a fellow in 1936. She established herself as an eminent historian of fourteenth-century England, despite a heavy burden of tutoring and lecturing. In 1955, she left Oxford to become professor of history at Westfield College in the University of London, a post she retained until 1967. In a Times

obituary, the principal of Westfield College wrote: “Her career ended in a blaze of distinction, responsibility and affection. Westfield remembers her with very special gratitude.”9 Mary Ogilvie, 1919 (1900–1990). See Appendices 5 and 6. Dilys Powell, 1920 (1901–1995), established herself as an influential film critic with the Sunday Times. Actor Dirk Bogarde, writing on the occasion of her death, said he held Powell in awe as a critic and was ecstatic when she finally praised him, after many years as a film actor, for his work in Victim (1961).10 She was also a panelist on the popular radio show My Word. Evelyn Proctor, 1915 (1897–1980). See Appendices 5 and 6. Edna Purdie, 1916 (1894–1968), taught German within the University of London for thirty years and gained wide respect for her teaching, administrative skills, and scholarship. When she was appointed chair of German at Bedford College in 1933, she had the distinction of being the first woman professor of German in Britain. She was not selfeffacing and could be formidable on first acquaintance but was revered by many of her students. Margaret Pyke, 1912 (1893–1966), became a leading exponent of family planning and often battled with public health authorities in her efforts to disseminate contraceptive advice. She served as general secretary and then honorary secretary of the National Birth Control Association for many years and was influential in establishing birth-control clinics in Britain. Hilda Reid, 1917 (1898–1982), became lifelong friends with Winifred Holtby at Somerville, even though Reid’s temperament was very different from the high-spirited and outgoing Holtby’s. Shy and introspective, Reid poured her love of history into well-researched historical novels, although Holtby regretted the “fatal diffidence” that prevented her from accomplishing more. It is true that her output was not large, but when she

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died in 1982, the Times called her “a writer of distinction.”11 Constance Savery, 1917 (1897–1999), began writing stories in childhood and often felt that her imagined world was more real than the physical one. As she said, “I have had a theatre in my head since I was four years old.”12 Transferring her vivid imagination to the printed page, Savery wrote many books for children during her long life. She won praise as a gifted and sensitive author who never moralized and who could depict warm personal relationships without becoming saccharine. Dorothy Sayers, 1912 (1893–1957), is most famous for her detective novels, considered classics of the genre. She created Lord Peter Wimsey as her amateur detective and featured him in eleven novels, as well as short stories. After her last Lord Peter mystery in 1936, she began writing theological dramas and developed a keen interest in Dante. Sayers was translating Dante’s Paradiso when she died suddenly at the age of sixty-four. Enid Starkie, 1916 (1897–1970), earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1928. She had a passion for French literature, and her books on French writers such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Flaubert were pioneering works in their day in that she used biographical information about her subjects to illuminate their poems and novels. In 1929, she returned to Somerville as lecturer in French literature. Starkie became a fellow of Somerville and tutor in modern languages in 1934 and university reader in French literature in 1946. When she died in 1970, the Times paid her tribute as one of the most “generously gifted women of her generation.”13 Sylvia Thompson, 1920 (1902–1968), is another in the long line of Somerville novelists. She published The Hounds of Spring, her most famous novel, in 1925. The Times obituary of 1968 praised her “rich descriptive powers” and her “skill in analyzing people’s emotions.”14 Janet Vaughan, 1919 (1899–1993). See Chapter 16 and Appendices 5 and 6.

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Helen Waddell, 1920 (1889–1965), medieval scholar, author, and translator, spent time at both Somerville and LMH, but she did not fully belong to either college. She went to Somerville at age thirty to fulfill residence requirements for a PhD (she already had a BA and MA from Queen’s University in Belfast). While a student, she gave a successful course of lectures at St. Hilda’s, but Oxford life did not really suit her. She left after five terms, moved to London, and began looking for a university position. Her lack of teaching experience hampered her search, and in 1923, she won a traveling scholarship from LMH, which enabled her to study for two years in Paris. From then on, Waddell turned out numerous books that brought the Middle Ages, and particularly Latin poetry, to life. She received honorary degrees from four universities, was elected to the Royal Irish Academy (1932), and was made a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1937). Her novel, Peter Abelard (1933) has been translated into many languages. Doreen Wallace, 1916 (1897–1989), was a successful and prolific novelist who balanced her literary interests with more down-to-earth ones. She was proud of being a farmer’s wife and threw herself energetically into marriage, motherhood, and farming. Wallace did not write her first novel until she was thirty-four years old (A Little Learning, 1931), but she continued to turn out works of fiction for almost fifty more years. Cicely Williams, 1917 (1893–1992), earned a medical degree in London. Her advanced ideas and methods of treatment in the field of pediatrics brought her international recognition, and she was the first person to identify kwashiorkor, a nutritional deficiency disease, when she worked among the children of Ghana. In Malaya when World War II began, she was imprisoned under brutal conditions by the Japanese (see Chapter 16). Following the war and a period of recuperation, she lectured and worked all over the world, always

focusing on the humane side of medicine and trying to counteract practices that were medically harmful, particularly to children. In 1977, she was the first woman to be awarded an honorary fellowship in the Royal Society of Medicine, and in 1979 she became an honorary fellow of Somerville. At the age of ninety-two, she was elected a fellow of Oxford’s Green College, which was established in 1979 as a postgraduate institution.

St. Hugh’s Mary Cartwright, 1919 (1900–1998), was an outstanding mathematician with an international reputation. In 1947, the Royal Society welcomed her as a fellow, shortly after it opened fellowships to women, and she had the distinction of being the first woman to serve on its council. Girton College, Cambridge, elected her its head in 1949, and she remained there until her retirement in 1968. She received many honorary doctorates and awards and was appointed DBE in 1969. Joan Evans, 1914 (1893–1997), studied archaeology at college. Her mother had been an early student at Somerville (1888–1891) with a strong interest in classical archaeology and, when she was thirty-six, married Sir John Evans, an eminent archaeologist and numismatist. Their shared interests often took them out of England, and the arrival of daughter Joan in 1893 did not hamper their work or style of living. Evans’s half-brother was Sir Arthur Evans, who gained world fame for his discovery of a previously unknown Minoan civilization at Knossos in Crete. Although Joan Evans achieved a diploma with distinction in archaeology from Oxford in 1916, her interest had shifted to art history, particularly jewelry and architecture. She stayed on at St. Hugh’s an extra year to work toward a research degree on the subject of magical jewels in the Middle Ages. Evans became a noted authority on French and English

medieval art and wrote prolifically in those areas. She won many academic honors, including an honorary doctorate from Oxford in 1932, and was prominent in archaeological and antiquarian societies. She never lost her affection for St. Hugh’s, serving on its council for thirty-six years, and was a generous benefactor to the college throughout her life. Margery Perham, 1914 (1895–1982), became assistant lecturer at Sheffield University after leaving college. She did not find the position congenial, however and, after a nervous breakdown in 1922, traveled to Somaliland to visit her sister and brotherin-law, the district commissioner. There her love affair with Africa began, and although she returned to England in 1924 as history tutor at St. Hugh’s, her heart was not in it. By means of a series of fellowships and grants, she was able to return to Africa in 1929 and over the next eight years traveled widely in the country, talking to people of all races and every economic status. Through books, articles, and lectures, Perham expounded her belief in indirect rule for Africa and the value of colonialism. When Nuffield College, Oxford, opened in 1937 to facilitate advanced study and research in the social sciences, Perham in 1939 became the first woman fellow. She was also elected reader in colonial administration, a post she held until 1948, and was the first director of Oxford’s Institute of Colonial Studies between 1945 and 1948. She retired from Oxford in 1963 but continued to write and lecture. For her work, Perham was awarded many academic and civil honors, including DCMG.15

St. Hilda’s Mary Coate, 1912 (1886–1972), was appointed history tutor at LMH in 1922 and was a fellow from 1926, retiring in 1946. She was an accomplished teacher and discerning examiner in the faculty of modern history, displaying her meticulous scholarship in learned

Appendix 2

299

historical publications. After her retirement to Devon, she continued her historical interests by working within the region to preserve local records and private collections of manuscripts. Kathleen Gibberd, 1915 (1897–1992), found her niche as a journalist, although she came to the profession late, in her early fifties. After leaving college, she worked as a trade-union organizer and then as a schoolmistress. In 1931, she wrote a textbook on citizenship—The People’s Government—because no adequate text existed when she introduced the subject into her school curriculum. It remained in print for forty years. Her journalistic career began when she joined the staff of the Times Educational Supplement in 1950. She went on to become the educational correspondent for the Sunday Times in 1956 and left to take the same position at the New Statesman in 1961. In her obituary, the Times called her “one of the most respected writers on education for four decades.”16 Agnes Leys, 1910 (1890–1952), came back to St. Hilda’s in 1923 as history tutor and then fellow. She married in 1933 and left the college in 1942 to follow her husband to Cumberland when he took a living there. Agnes Leys made solid contributions to medieval studies and was a gifted lecturer. Her students remember her as a forceful, dedicated woman who made them feel valued and who gave them “the benefit of her high moral standards and her broad appreciation of European civilization.”17 When she retired from St. Hilda’s, she threw the whole weight of her considerable energy into running the vicarage and becoming involved with adult education, local politics, and school management. Cecil Woodham-Smith, 1914 (1896–1977), a distinguished biographer and historian, married in 1928 and waited to begin her literary career until after her children went to boarding school. She wrote acclaimed biographies of Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria and two masterful histories: an analysis of the Irish potato famine of the 1840s (The

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Great Hunger) and an account of the events that led to the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War (The Reason Why). She reported that she wrote about the charge itself over a thirty-six-hour period, without food or other breaks, until the last gun was silenced, then had a stiff drink and slept for two days.18 Her scholarly, readable books commanded a wide audience. When she died, she was planning a further volume of her biography of Queen Victoria, which had ended with the death of Prince Albert. She received numerous honorary doctorates, was appointed CBE in 1960, and became an honorary fellow of St. Hilda’s in 1967.

Society of Oxford Home-Students Kathleen Baxter, 1919 (1901–1988), joined the Department of Inland Revenue as inspector of taxes after graduation. When she married in 1931, she had to resign her position, although she acted as a tax consultant to a firm of accountants in London. After the war, she took up the cause of women’s rights and joined the National Council of Women in 1951. Through this organization, she effectively pushed for many reforms for women, her influence extending to international issues. Baxter began studying law in late middle age and was called to the bar in 1971. As an honorary legal adviser to the National Council of Women, she spent much time on law issues relating to women. Winifred Margaret Gibson, 1915 (1897–1958), joined the Oxford University Registry Office after college, where she remained for many years. She specialized in keeping records of women students and became known for her vast knowledge of university procedure. In 1954, she became the first female editor of the Oxford University Gazette, the university’s official journal.

Naomi Mitchison, 1914 (1897–1999). See Chapter 11. Mary Winearls Porter, 1916 (1886–1980), had almost no formal education as a child yet became an important figure in classical crystallography and was granted a DSc (Doctor of Science) from Oxford in 1932. Her father was on the Times staff and traveled so much that Polly (as she was usually known) had few opportunities for regular schooling. At the age of fifteen, she became interested in Italian marble while living in Rome, and when her family was in Oxford in 1902, she met Professor Henry Miers, Waynflete Professor of Crystallography and Mineralogy. He encouraged her study and, over the next few years, offered her work in his research group whenever her parents happened to spend a few months in Oxford. Eventually, she was able to settle in Britain and joined the Society of Home-Students to work toward a BSc in mineralogy. Between 1919 and 1929, Porter held the Lady Carlisle Research Fellowship at Somerville, which enabled her to concentrate fulltime on research. She was a principal collaborator with Thomas V. Barker, an Oxford mineralogist, on a massive crystal classification project and carried on this work after Barker died in 1931. Between 1951 and 1964, she and another scientist published The Barker Index of Crystals in seven volumes. Helen de Guerry Simpson, 1915 (1897–1940), was Australian. She died young, but her literary output was prolific and wide-ranging: novels, plays, histories, biographies, and translations from French. Simpson and Dorothy Sayers became friends in London, and Dorothy, writing to a friend after Simpson’s death, commented: “I have never met anybody who equalled her in vivid personality and in the intense interest she brought into her contacts with people and things.”19

Appendix 3

Some Notable Women Students, 1921–1940

Women are listed alphabetically by college, their names followed by the year (when known) in which they entered college.

century figures. She also wrote a lively account of Elizabeth Wordsworth’s life. Her biographies are rich in detail about the Victorian period and have been praised for being both well researched and highly readable. Nora Beloff, 1937 (1919–1997), served in the Foreign Office before taking up journalism. In 1948, she joined the Observer and, as foreign correspondent, reported from Europe and America. She was appointed political correspondent at the paper in 1964 and held that position until her retirement in 1976, becoming “one of the most ‘visible’ women journalists writing for the broadsheet press in her day.”2 She was not timid about expressing her strong beliefs and political opinions, a practice that sometimes landed her in hot water and aroused the hostility of the government. Nora Beloff was also the author of a number of books with political themes. Marjorie Chibnall, 1933 (b. 1915), a medieval historian, got her PhD from Cambridge in 1947. She went to Girton in the same year as lecturer and remained there, as fellow, until 1965. From 1965 to 1982, she served as research fellow and then official fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. One of her most important scholarly contributions was the editing and translating of The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, a massive sixvolume undertaking published between 1969 and 1980. She was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1978, and

Lady Margaret Hall Diana Athill, 1936 (b. 1917), helped André Deutsch establish his publishing firm in the 1950s and remained there as director and editor for almost fifty years. She won a reputation as one of the best editors in London and worked successfully with many prominent writers. A writer, as well as an editor, she has published a novel and a number of well-received memoirs. Josephine Barnes, 1930 (1912–1999), was described in her Times obituary as “one of the most brilliant women of her generation.”1 She received her medical degree in 1941, specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, and devoted herself to improving the health of women and babies, although she also had a major influence on other areas of medicine. She was a woman of great energy and concentration, combining her work as a physician with writing books and contributing numerous articles to medical journals, as well as undertaking a heavy schedule of lectures and committee work. In 1974, Dr. Barnes was appointed DBE and in 1979, she became the first woman president of the British Medical Association. Georgina Battiscombe, 1924 (1905–2006), was an award-winning biographer who specialized in books about nineteenth-

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in 2002, the University of Cambridge conferred on her an honorary DLitt. Wilma Crowther, 1937 (1918–1989). See Appendix 5. Dorothy Emmet, 1923 (1904–2000), was a distinguished philosopher who always combined her scholarly interests with social and political issues. She was appointed lecturer in philosophy of religion at Manchester University in 1938 and became reader in philosophy in 1945 and the Sir Samuel Hall Professor of Philosophy in 1946. She was largely responsible for building a small department of philosophy at Manchester into a strong and respected entity. Her numerous books reflect her varied philosophical and moral interests. Anne Fremantle, 1927 (1909–2003), wrote prolifically, producing more than thirty books. She contributed articles to many newspapers and periodicals and was associate editor of the liberal Catholic review, Commonweal. Mary Glasgow, 1923 (1904–1983), took on many roles in her life. From 1928 to 1940, she worked at the Board of Education as a civil servant and in 1936 was appointed founding secretary of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, which later became the Arts Council of Great Britain. After leaving the Arts Council in 1951, she worked as a translator, literary agent, writer, and film censor before founding a publishing firm in 1957 that became Mary Glasgow Publications. The firm specialized in French textbooks and magazines that had wide appeal for language students, and it now offers magazines in a variety of languages. In 1978, she founded the Mary Glasgow Language Trust to promote modern languages and teaching. When she retired at the age of seventy, she bought a small château in France and took flying lessons so that she could get back and forth between England and France. She was appointed CBE in 1949 and was honored with the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 1968. Mary Goldring, 1940 (b. 1923), is an

eminent economist, business journalist, and award-winning broadcaster. From 1949 to 1974, she was air and science correspondent for the Economist. She is trustee of the Science Museum and was appointed OBE in 1987. Nicolete Gray, 1929 (1911–1997), was a distinguished art historian, teacher of lettering, and an excellent lettering artist. Her knowledge of medieval, Victorian, and modern art was wide, and she wrote many books and articles on these subjects over her lifetime. In 1936, she organized the first international exhibition of abstract art in Britain and brought Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Miró, among others, to exhibit alongside British artists such as Nicholson, Hepworth, and Moore. Alethea Hayter, 1929 (1911–2006), an award-winning writer, specialized in biography and literary criticism. She worked for the British Council from 1945 to 1971 and served as cultural attaché with the British embassy in Belgium and Luxembourg. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was appointed OBE in 1970. Margaret Jennings, 1924 (1904–1994). See Appendix 5. Margaret Lambert, 1926 (1906–1995), was an author and lecturer who from 1951 to 1983 served in the German Foreign Office Documents as British editor-in-chief. In 1965, she was appointed CMG. Kathleen Lea, 1921 (1903–1995). See Appendix 5. Elizabeth Longford, 1926 (1906–2002), one of the most popular women undergraduates of her day when she read classics at LMH, married Frank Pakenham in 1931 and helped him in his political career while raising a family of eight children; he would become seventh Earl of Longford in 1961. She worked as a journalist but began her well-known career as a biographer in 1960. In 1965, she was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was appointed CBE in 1974. When Germaine Greer once remarked to Lady Longford’s husband

that his wife could have written more books if she hadn’t had so many children, Elizabeth Longford had this reply: “Surely twenty books is enough.”3 Rosalie Glyn Grylls Mander, 1924 (1905–1988), made her name as a biographer, writing about Mary Shelley, William Godwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, among others. She and her husband lived in Wightwick Manor in Staffordshire, a neo-Gothic house that they turned into a monument to the Pre-Raphaelites and gave to the National Trust in 1937. Rosalind Mitchison, 1938 (1919–2002), has been described as “the foremost exponent of the social history of Scotland” in the twentieth century. In 1947, she married John Murdoch Mitchison (son of Naomi Mitchison), and they moved to Edinburgh in 1953, when he accepted a university position there. Rosalind joined the Department of Economic History at Edinburgh in 1954, becoming reader in 1967 and professor of social history in 1981. In her books, written in “forthright, elegant and lucid prose,” she probed new areas of study; “her eminence as a social historian derived from her awareness of the crucial interrelationships between social, political and economic approaches previously considered discrete.”4 Rosemary Murray, 1932 (1913–2004), went to Girton College in 1946 as lecturer in chemistry, later becoming a fellow and the only female university demonstrator in chemistry. She was one of the founding members of New Hall, which became the third women’s college in Cambridge, and was largely responsible for its successful expansion. She served as president of New Hall from 1964 until she retired in 1981. In 1975, she became the first woman vice-chancellor of Cambridge and held the post until 1977. She received numerous honorary doctorates and was appointed DBE in 1977. Joyce Pearce, 1934 (1915–1985), entered the teaching field. In 1951, she and two fellow teachers brought a small group of

Appendix 3

303

Polish and Latvian girls from European camps for displaced persons to Britain for resettlement. The experiment was so successful that they founded the Ockenden Venture as a registered charity in 1955 to bring more displaced people to the UK in order to give them a new start in life. By 1963, there were sixteen reception centers in the country. (The Ockenden Venture is now known as Ockenden International and works almost solely outside Britain to help people whose lives have been disrupted by environmental disasters or by war.) Pearce was awarded an OBE for her compassionate and energetic service to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Menna Prestwich, 1935 (1917–1990). See Appendix 5. Mary Smieton, 1922 (1902–2005), joined the civil service in 1925, the first year women were allowed to compete. In 1933, she became the first woman to be appointed private secretary to a minister, serving under Sir Henry Betterton at the Ministry of Labour. During the war, she took a prominent role in mobilizing women for wartime work and was honored with a DBE in 1949. She went back into the civil service after the war and became permanent undersecretary at the Ministry of Education in 1959. After her retirement in 1963, she remained active in public affairs, serving as trustee of the British Museum from 1963 to 1973 and chair of the Bedford College Council from 1964 to 1970. Barbara Strachey, 1930 (1912–1999), wrote about her formidable family background in Remarkable Relations (1980), drawing on a store of twenty thousand letters written by her grandmothers, aunts, and mother. She joined the BBC in 1941 and was an important cog in the machinery that transformed the General Overseas Service into the World Service in 1965. Charis Waddy, 1927 (1909–2001), won recognition as an Islamic scholar and writer and was the first woman to graduate from Oxford in oriental languages. A strong believer in trying to

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find a common understanding between people of different faiths, she worked for many years with Moral Re-Armament to build communities of faith. C. V. Wedgwood, 1928 (1910–1997), became one of Britain’s most celebrated historians with her scholarly, readable books and was described as “too true an historian to be more than a competent biographer.”5 In 1969, she became only the third woman appointed a member of the Order of Merit, and many other honors came her way, including an honorary DLitt from Oxford. She was also a devoted public servant, for which she was appointed CBE in 1958 and DBE in 1968.

Somerville Janet Adam Smith, 1923 (1905–1999), “one of the grandes dames of literary London,” served as literary editor of the New Statesman between 1952 and 1960 and also became an author and broadcaster. 6 A keen mountaineer, she wrote a book about her climbing experiences in 1946. She was appointed OBE in 1982. Mary Bennett, 1931 (1913–2005), worked for the BBC’s Transcription Service between 1941 and 1945. She then joined the Colonial Office, serving between 1945 and 1956, and married in 1955. She accepted the principalship of St. Hilda’s in 1965 and retired in 1980. Elizabeth Chilver, 1932 (b. 1914), directed the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in Oxford from 1957 to 1961 and served as senior research fellow at the London Institute of Commonwealth Studies from 1961 to 1964. From 1964 to 1971, she headed Bedford College, London, and accepted the principalship of LMH in 1971, a position she retained until 1979. Barbara Craig, 1934 (1915–2005), married in 1942 and spent much time abroad, helping her husband in his work for the British Council while pursuing her own archaeological interests. In 1967, Somerville elected her to succeed Janet Vaughan as principal, and she remained at her old college until 1980, presiding

over a tumultuous period when Oxford colleges began to go co-ed. Penelope Fitzgerald, 1935 (1916–2000), did not begin her serious writing career until the mid-1970s, when her three children were grown. She wrote several biographies, but it is her novels that have been singled out for praise. She won the Booker Prize in 1979 for Offshore, a story about a family living in a houseboat on the Thames (she and her family had lived on a barge for a time).7 She was short-listed for the Booker on three other occasions, and in 1998, with The Blue Flower, she became the first non-American to win the U.S. National Book Critics Circle prize. In her Times obituary, Fitzgerald was described as a “writer of acutely observed tragicomedies with a serious purpose.”8 Philippa Foot, 1939 (b. 1922). See Appendix 5. Celia Fremlin, 1933 (b. 1914), began her writing career when she was forty-four. She is an award-winning author of mysteries and psychological suspense novels. Indira Gandhi, 1937 (1917–1984), the only child of Indian statesman Jawaharlal Nehru, studied at Somerville for only one year. She became a member of the central committee of the Indian Congress in 1950, taking over the prestigious post of president of the Congress Party in 1956. She became prime minister of India in 1966, but economic troubles and public backlash against allegations of corruption resulted in her losing the office in 1977. She won back her followers and was reinstated as prime minister in 1980. In 1983 and early 1984, Gandhi aroused the ire of Sikh militants when she sent in government troops to put down disturbances in the Punjab, and, in 1984, two of her Sikh bodyguards shot her to death while she was in the garden of the official residence. Grace Wyndham Goldie, 1922 (1900–1986), taught for a number of years after her marriage in 1928. She joined the BBC in 1944 as talks producer. Over the next

twenty years, she produced major current affairs programs, all of which showed her skill at using television as a vehicle for airing international and political issues. Her energy and high standards could be daunting, but her television know-how proved invaluable to scores of people who were just entering the business. Margaret Hall, 1929 (1910–1995). See Appendix 5. Jenifer Hart, 1932 (1914–2005). See Appendix 5. Agnes Headlam-Morley, 1921 (1902–1986). See Appendix 5. Dorothy Hodgkin, 1928 (1910–1994), earned a first in chemistry in 1932. For her illustrious career, see Chapters 13 and 16. Peggy Jay, 1931 (1913-2008), a crusading Labour politician, served for many years on the London County Council and then on the Greater London Council. Penelope Jessel, 1937 (1920–1996), the daughter of Oxford bookseller Sir Basil Blackwell, was widowed at thirty-four. With two young sons to support, she took lecturing posts at William Temple College in Rugby (1956–1962) and at Plater College, Oxford (1968–1984). Jessel also became a Liberal Party activist and a tireless volunteer worker on causes that mattered to her. She particularly fought against developments that encroached on the English countryside and was a valuable member of the Oxford Civic Society and the Council for the Protection of Rural England. She was appointed DBE in 1987. Kathleen Kenyon, 1925 (1906–1978), was elected the first woman president of the University Archaeological Society while attending Somerville. She became an archaeologist of note and, in Archaeology in the Holy Land (1960), “largely rewrote the history of ancient civilization in Palestine.”9 She helped found the University of London Institute of Archaeology in 1937 and was a lecturer there on Palestinian archaeology between 1948 and 1962. In 1962, she became principal of St. Hugh’s and oversaw much

Appendix 3

305

of the college’s expansion program until her retirement in 1973. She was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1955 and appointed DBE in 1973. Marghanita Laski, 1933 (1915–1988), began writing novels in 1944. She also produced a number of other literary works (essays, author studies, and a book on secular and religious experiences) and became well known as a broadcaster. She made enormous contributions as a reader for Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, supplying 250,000 examples to the project, all of which she wrote out by hand.10 Alix Meynell, 1922 (1908–1999), wanted to become a barrister after leaving Somerville, a profession not open to women until 1920, but needed money to earn her qualifications. She looked at another area that had been closed to women, the administrative class of the civil service. The competitive examination, reputed to be very difficult, had just opened to women in 1925, and when Meynell entered for it, she was one of two women in the list of two hundred successful candidates and twelfth in order of merit. She joined the Board of Trade and became the first woman principal in 1932. She rose in rank to undersecretary in 1946 and remained there until she retired from the civil service in 1955. In 1949, she was appointed DBE. After retirement, Meynell was called to the bar in 1956 and after the death of her husband, Sir Francis Meynell, who had founded the Nonesuch Press, served as managing director of the press from 1976 to 1986. Mary Midgley, 1938 (b. 1919), married in 1950 and had three children before becoming a part-time lecturer in philosophy at the University of Newcastle in 1965. She went full time in 1970 and served as senior lecturer from 1975 to 1980. She has achieved distinction as a moral philosopher, well known for her books that probe the relationship between humans and animals. One critic described Beast and Man, published in

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1978, as “a modest, wise, beautifully written and learned book, as simple as possible—she detests jargon of all kinds—and stunningly intelligent.”11 Helen Muir, 1939 (1920–2005), won an international reputation for her work in the biochemistry of connective tissues. From 1977 to 1990, she was director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London. She was appointed CBE in 1981 and was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1977, a body of the most eminent scientists, engineers, and technologists from Britain and the Commonwealth. Iris Murdoch, 1938 (1919–1999). See Appendix 5. Elisabeth Murray, 1928 (1909–1998), was the granddaughter of James Murray, the lexicographer who undertook the gigantic task of preparing the Oxford English Dictionary. She published The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports in 1935, still a definitive work on the subject. For ten years (1938–1948), she worked at Girton College, Cambridge, in a variety of posts and moved to Bishop Otter College, Chichester, in 1948 as principal. She took over the institution of two hundred women students, almost more a boarding school than a college, and over the next twenty years expanded the curriculum, launched a building program, and welcomed male students. After retirement in 1970, she wrote a biography of her grandfather and was active in local government and conservation. She was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. Kathleen Nott, 1926 (1905–1999), a novelist and poet, will probably be better remembered for her critical and philosophical works. As her Times obituary noted: “It was in analytical rather than creative literature that her severely rational mind found its best expression.”12 She was an active member of PEN and became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1977. Kathleen Ollerenshaw, 1931 (b. 1912), an outstanding mathematician and educator,

was a foundation fellow for the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, a professional society that began in 1964 to promote mathematics in industry, business, the public sector, education, and research. She has been involved with both the University of Manchester and Lancaster University and was a member of the Manchester City Council from 1956 to 1981. She was appointed DBE in 1971. A keen amateur astronomer, she presided at the opening of the Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Observatory at Lancaster University on May 20, 2002. Daphne Park, 1940 (b. 1921), worked as a decoder during the war (see Chapter 16). She entered the Foreign Office in 1948, was posted to Moscow in 1954, and spent the next twenty-five years as a diplomat all over the globe. In 1980, Somerville elected her as principal, and she remained in office until 1989. It is only fairly recently, however, that Park has been revealed as a senior controller for MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, which ran agents in Moscow, Vietnam, and Africa. In all her postings, she answered to two bodies: to the Foreign Office as a diplomat and to MI6 as an intelligence officer. As she said in an interview, “It’s been a huge advantage during my professional career that I’ve always looked like a cheerful, fat missionary.”13 Anne Scott-James, 1931 (b. 1913), was one of Britain’s first women career journalists. She joined Vogue after Oxford and became editor of Harper’s Bazaar in 1945. She is also an expert gardener and has written a number of gardening books. For a number of years, she was a panelist on the popular radio show My Word. E[dith]. J[oy]. Scovell, 1926 (1907–1999), was a poet whose gifts were much admired by critics and other poets but whose name often goes unrecognized by the reading public. She contributed poems to undergraduate publications while at Somerville and published her first poetry collection in 1944. She often wrote about birth, motherhood (she had two children), aging, death, and nature, but her Times

obituary noted that “her poetry is as far removed from cosy domesticity as from the rhetoric of an aggressive feminism.”14 One critic wrote that Scovell shared Virginia Woolf’s “visionary perception of the ways in which the small, the familiar, the domestic, may encapsulate or gesture towards a range of truths which are neither slender nor superficial.”15 Evelyn Sharp, 1922 (1903–1985), was one of the first women to enter the administrative class of the civil service and the first woman to achieve the rank of permanent secretary (Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 1955–1966). She introduced many bold new policies and always kept the public good in the forefront. The recipient of several honorary doctorates, including an honorary DCL from Oxford in 1960, she was appointed DBE in 1948. In 1966, she was created a life peer, Baroness Sharp of Hornsey. Mary Somerville, 1921 (1897–1963), became the first woman to reach the rank of controller at the BBC, which she joined in 1925. A pioneer in educational broadcasting, she was instrumental in establishing a working relationship among the BBC, the Board of Education, local education authorities, and teachers. In 1935, she was appointed OBE. Lucy Sutherland, 1925 (1903–1980). See Appendices 5 and 6. Kathleen Tillotson, 1924 (1906–2001), was one of the most distinguished scholars of her generation. She succeeded Una Ellis-Fermor, another Somervillian, as Hildred Carlile Professor of English at the University of London in 1958, retiring in 1971. She is best known for her work on Dickens and always showed herself to be a “precise scholar, hating the slipshod in thought or expression, and a careful, but merciful, examiner.”16 Many honors came her way: fellow of the British Academy (1965), fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1983), an honorary DLitt from Oxford (1982), OBE (1983), and CBE (1991). Nancy Trenaman, 1938 (1921–2002), went straight into the civil service after college,

Appendix 3

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where she had a long and distinguished career. In 1966, she became principal of St. Anne’s, retiring in 1984. She brought a new professionalism to the post at St. Anne’s and proved to be a valuable fundraiser. Barbara Ward, 1932 (1914–1981), cannot be assigned a pigeonhole; she cast her net widely as a journalist, broadcaster, economist, conservationist, humanitarian, and lecturer. She wrote prolifically on politics, economics, and ecology and served as president of the International Institute for Environment and Development from 1973 to 1980. She received many honorary degrees and awards and was made a life peer— Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth—in 1976. “Barbara Ward’s rare assortment of talents—literary, oratorical, conceptive, pedagogic, and musical—combined with an encyclopaedic memory, charm, and radiance, enabled her to stamp her thoughts and feelings on a generation.”17 Eirene White, 1929 (1909–1999), joined the Manchester Evening News in 1945 as the first accredited woman political correspondent. Not content with writing about politics, she entered Parliament as a Labour candidate in 1950 and kept her seat for twenty years. She became the first woman to hold the office of minister of state for foreign affairs and was an industrious, and often formidable, MP. With a passionate interest in both public libraries and Wales, she worked to promote a good Welsh library system. In 1970, she was made a life peer, Baroness White of Rhymney, Monmouth, and became an active member of the House of Lords. Anne Whiteman, 1937 (1981–2000). See Appendix 5.

St. Hugh’s Madge Adam, 1931 (1912–2001). See Appendix 5. Elizabeth Anscombe, 1941 (1919–2001). See Appendix 5. Anne Pellew Burns, 1935 (1915–2001), took a first in engineering science. She worked

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for the Royal Aircraft Establishment from 1953 to 1977 and specialized as an air accident investigator. In 1954, she took up gliding, became the British national gliding champion in 1966, and set many national and international records for distance, height, and speed. Barbara Castle, 1929 (1910–2002), was a lifelong, crusading socialist in her political career as a Labour MP and cabinet minister, a career that lasted from 1945 to 1979. She was a dynamic and forceful woman who aroused strong feelings, both positive and negative, from those who worked with her. After she left the House of Commons in 1979, she was elected to the European Parliament and served there for ten years, leading the British Labour group between 1979 and 1985. In 1990, she was created a life peer, Baroness Castle of Blackburn. Alison Fairlie, 1935 (1917–1993), became an outstanding scholar of French literature. She also played a central role in establishing modern languages as a serious discipline in British universities after the war. She went to Girton College as a lecturer in French in 1944 and, in 1972, became the first holder of a personal professorship in the Cambridge French Department, retiring in 1980. Phyllis Hartnoll, 1926 (1906–1997), had the distinction of being the first woman undergraduate to win the university’s Newdigate Prize for English Verse. She had many skills, which she exhibited in her various roles as poet, musicologist, theatre historian, editor, and publisher. Lucille Iremonger, 1937 (1919–1989), wrote The Ghosts of Versailles in 1957, a book about two former principals of her college (see Chapter 9). She wrote fifteen books in all, and her Times obituary calls her one of the “rare amateurs who contributed something special to the study of history.”18 She also sat on the London County Council and was a great asset as a parliamentary wife when her husband became an MP in 1954. Margaret Lane (1909–1994) graduated from St. Hugh’s in 1928 and found work as a journalist. She wrote her first book in

1935 and then began turning out novels, biographies, and books on natural history for children. She also presided over a number of literary societies and was a member of the old BBC Brains Trust. Mary Myfanwy Piper (1911–1997) graduated from St. Hugh’s in 1933 and married the English artist John Piper in 1937. Their home became a center of creative hospitality for members of the literary and art world. She was a writer and librettist and wrote three librettos for composer Benjamin Britten, a collaboration that led to a strong friendship until his death in 1976. Marjorie Reeves, 1923 (1905–2003). See Appendix 5. Mary Renault (pseudonym of Eileen Mary Challans) (1905–1983) received a degree from St. Hugh’s in 1928 and then trained as a nurse, becoming registered in 1937. She had always had a passion for literature, however, and began writing novels. When her fourth book, Return to the Night (1947), earned an MGM prize for £40,000, she gave up nursing, emigrated to South Africa with her lifelong companion Julie Mullard, and took up writing full-time. She is best known for her historical novels set in ancient Greece, which became very popular with the reading public. Meriol Trevor (1919–2000) attended St. Hugh’s just before the Second World War and, during the war, skippered a canal boat that carried cargo between London and Birmingham. She became a prolific writer for both adults and children and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1963 for her two-volume biography of Cardinal Newman.19 Doreen Warriner, 1922 (1904–1972), obtained a PhD from the University of London in 1931. For her humanitarian efforts during World War II, she was made OBE in 1941 (see Chapter 16). In 1947, she became a lecturer at the School of Slavonic Studies at the University of London and went on to hold the rank of reader and professor. She wrote many books and articles on land



Appendix 3 reform and economic development and became known internationally for her expertise on the economic problems of underdeveloped countries.

309

Beryl Smalley, 1924 (1905–1984). See Appendix 5. Muriel Tomlinson, 1928 (1909–1991). See Appendix 5.

St. Hilda’s

Society of Oxford Home-Students

Mildred Archer, 1931 (1911–2005), was an authority on Indian art and was keeper of prints and drawings in London’s India Office Library from 1954 to 1980. She wrote numerous books on facets of Indian art and was appointed OBE in 1979. She became an honorary fellow of St. Hilda’s in 1978. Helen Gardner, 1926 (1908–1986). See Appendix 5. Catherine Heath, 1943 (1924–1991), was an educator and author of novels that often dealt with the role of women in British society. One of her novels, Behaving Badly, was adapted for television. Rosalind Hill, 1928 (1908–1997), was an eminent historian who made permanent additions to our knowledge of the thirteenth-century English church, the Crusades, Venerable Bede, and heraldic beasts. In 1937, she went to Westfield College, London, as lecturer, becoming reader in 1955 and professor in 1971. She was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Kathleen Major, 1925 (1906–2001). See Appendix 5. Barbara Pym, 1931 (1913–1980), began working for the African Institute in London in 1946 and became assistant editor of its journal. She also began writing novels and published six between 1950 and 1961 but remained largely unnoticed. In 1977, when the poet Philip Larkin named her as one of the most underrated novelists of the century, she suddenly became famous. She chronicled a “world small in scope but wide in relevance,” and this world about “little people, especially women, leading quiet lives of compromise, resignation, and acceptance is recorded with compassion, irony, dry wit, an evocative attention to details, and an absolute absence of sentimentality.”20

Dorothy Bednarowska (1915–2003). See Appendix 5. Hester Burton, 1932 (1913–2000), was an award-winning author of fiction for children. Between 1960 and 1981, she produced eighteen books of vivid historical fiction. Mary Douglas, 1940 (1921–2007), returned to her college in 1946 to begin postgraduate studies in social anthropology. In 1951, she joined the Department of Anthropology at University College, London, and held a professorship of social anthropology there between 1970 and 1978. In 1977, she became director of research on culture at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York and was Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern from 1981 until 1985. Her books established her “as a leading theorist of culture and theology.”21 She was awarded a CBE in 1992, a DBE in 2007, and an honorary degree from Oxford in 2003. She was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1989. Barbara Duncum, 1939 (1910–2001), read history at London University and then worked as a research assistant in the Wellcome Medical History Museum. In 1938, she produced a brief history of anesthesia at the request of the director of the newly established Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics at Oxford, who was impressed enough to appoint her to a historical research position in the department and to suggest that she work toward a DPhil degree. Between 1939 and 1945, she was a graduate student at St. Anne’s, and after receiving her degree, began work at the Nuffield Foundation in London and rewrote her thesis for publication. It was published in 1947 and quickly attained status as “the classic and authoritative history of inhalation

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anaesthesia and as a classic in the history of medicine.”22 After she retired in the late 1970s, she was elected as one of the first honorary members when the History of Anaesthesia Society was formed. Isobel Henderson, 1927 (1906–1967), went to Somerville in 1931 as assistant tutor in ancient history, becoming a fellow in 1933. Her scholarly output was not great, but she was a memorable, inspiring, and demanding tutor. Her Times obituary said that, to her pupils, she was a “gay mentor of incredulity” but that the “fun was backed by a rigorous attention to the sources of Roman history, their nature, their dating, and their memory.”23 Cicely Saunders (1918–2005), founder of the modern hospice movement, went to the Home-Students the year before the Second World War broke out and

left Oxford in 1939 to take up nursing. When her back could not take the strain of nursing, she returned to St. Anne’s in 1944 to complete a war degree and take a diploma in public and social administration. She then trained as a medical social worker and qualified as a doctor in 1957. In 1967, she opened St. Christopher’s Hospice in London, where terminally ill people could go for total pain care and be attended to physically, psychologically, and spiritually. She served as the medical director from 1967 to 1985 and continued to work there into her eighties. Her extraordinary work on behalf of the dying and her pioneering efforts in the field of palliative medicine earned her many honors and awards. In 1989, she received the prestigious Order of Merit.

Appendix 4

Some Notable Women Students, 1941–1960

Women are listed alphabetically by college, their names followed by the year (when known) in which they entered college.

won the Guardian prize for fiction in 1975. Albinia (Tilly) De La Mare, 1951 (1932–2001), was an assistant librarian in Oxford’s Bodleian Library from 1964 to 1988. From 1989 to 1997, she was a professor of paleography at London University. She was elected to the British Academy in 1987 and was appointed OBE in 1993. Antonia Fraser, 1950 (b. 1932), the daughter of Elizabeth Longford, has written acclaimed and popular biographies of prominent historical figures, including Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography. She has also written bestselling contemporary mystery novels. She is married to the distinguished playwright Harold Pinter. Teresa Hayter, 1958 (b. 1940), joined the Overseas Development Institute in 1963 and has written on development issues. She is also a dedicated antiracist campaigner and an activist for refugees’ rights and for an end to immigration controls. She is the author of Open Borders: The Case against Immigration Controls (2000). Irene Hindmarsh, 1942 (b. 1923), entered the teaching profession after college. In 1970, she was selected to be principal of St. Aidan’s College, University of Durham, and acted as pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Durham between 1982 and 1985, retiring in 1988. Hermione Hobhouse, 1951 (b. 1934), an

Lady Margaret Hall Sarah Bradford, 1956 (b. 1938), a historian and biographer, has written a number of biographies of well-known people, carefully researched books that are full of painstaking detail. Gwendoline Butler, 1944 (b. 1922), who also writes as Jennie Melville, has published more than seventy-five books. She specializes in mysteries of several types—police procedurals, historical mysteries, and gothic thrillers—and has been praised for her superb storytelling. Juliet Campbell, 1954 (b. 1935), joined the Foreign Service in 1957 and served in Europe and Asia. From 1988 to 1991, she was ambassador to Luxembourg. In 1992, she was elected Mistress of Girton College, retiring in 1998. She was made CMG in 1988. Caryl Churchill, 1957 (b. 1938), began writing plays while at Oxford and developed into one of the leading dramatists of her generation. In her plays for radio, television, and the theatre, she often addresses social and political issues from a radical and feminist viewpoint that is infused with wit. Sylvia Clayton, 1943 (1926–1994), was a translator, free-lance journalist, television critic for the Daily Telegraph, and novelist. One of her novels, The Romans,

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architectural historian, wrote the 1971 award-winning biography Thomas Cubitt: Master Builder. In Lost London (1971), Thomas Lask of the New York Times writes that “her passionate scorn and contempt for what she calls ‘official vandalism’ should blanch the cheek of every bureaucrat.”1 She was appointed OBE in 1981. Sheila Innes, 1949 (b. 1931), joined the BBC in 1955 as a radio producer for the World Service. She was head of BBC Continuing Education between 1977 and 1984 and became controller of BBC Education Broadcasting in 1984, serving in that position until 1987. She acts as a media and education consultant. Mary Keen, 1959 (b. 1940), is a garden designer, writer, and lecturer who has written gardening columns for several British newspapers. She has undertaken many large private commissions and designed the gardens for the Glyndebourne Opera House. Fiona MacCarthy, 1958 (b. 1940), is a journalist, biographer, design historian, and associate editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. She won the Wolfson History Prize in 1994 for her biography of William Morris. She holds fellowships in the Royal College of Art and in the Royal Society of Literature. Sujata Manohar, 1954 (b. 1934), began practicing as a lawyer in the Bombay High Court in 1958, when it was rare to see women barristers. She rose to become the first woman judge in the Bombay High Court and the chief justice of Kerala. In 1994, she became the only woman judge on the Supreme Court of India. She is also a member of the National Human Rights Commission and an honorary fellow of LMH. Barbara Mills, 1959 (b. 1940), was called to the Bar in 1963 and became Queen’s Counsel in 1986. From 1992 to 1998, she had the distinction of serving as the first woman director of public prosecutions. She then became the adjudicator for the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise and was appointed DBE in 1997.

Jennifer Montagu, 1949 (b. 1931), an authority on Roman baroque sculpture, got her PhD from the Warburg Institute of the University London in 1959.2 In 1964, she returned to the Warburg as assistant curator, then curator, of the photograph collection, retiring in 1991. She was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1986. Mary Moore, 1948 (b. 1930), daughter of a Regius Professor of History at Oxford, joined the Foreign (later Diplomatic) Service in 1951 but had to resign when she married in 1963, owing to a marriage bar. Between 1980 and 1990, she acted as principal of St. Hilda’s. Under the pen name Helena Osborne, she as written four romantic thrillers, as well as TV and radio plays. Pauline Neville-Jones, 1958 (b. 1939), joined the Diplomatic Service in 1963 and held many responsible posts during her thirtythree-year tenure. She was made DCMG in 1996 and was a governor of the BBC from 1998 to 2004. Helen Oppenheimer, 1944 (b. 1926), is a preacher, lecturer, and writer on moral and philosophical theology. She has served on numerous Church of England commissions dealing with marriage and ethics. Her book titles reflect her interests, among them The Marriage Bond, The Character of Christian Morality, The Hope of Happiness: A Sketch for Christian Humanism. Margaret Rothwell, 1957 (b. 1938), joined the Diplomatic Service in 1961 and has been posted to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States. From 1990 to 1997, she was ambassador to the Ivory Coast. Now retired, she was made CMG in 1992. Gillian Tindall, 1956 (b. 1938), has turned her hand to novels, short stories, history, biography, literary criticism, and urban studies, particularly the development of cities. She has won awards for both her fiction and nonfiction and was honored by the French government in 2001 with L’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983.

Rachel Trickett, 1942 (1923–1999). See Appendix 5. Margaret Turner-Warwick, 1943 (b. 1924), has had a distinguished career in thoracic medicine, serving as a consulting physician and as professor of thoracic medicine at London University from 1972 to 1987. She has published widely on immunology and thoracic medicine and, in 1989, became the first woman president of the Royal College of Physicians in its 473-year history. In 1992, she was appointed DBE and received an honorary DSc from Oxford. Mary Warnock, 1942 (b. 1924). See Appendix 5.

Somerville Nina Bawden, 1943 (b. 1925), is a prolific writer who is known for her awardwinning children’s books and for her adult novels, which excel “in revealing the tensions and hidden currents at work beneath the calm and humdrum exteriors of her characters.”3 She became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1970. June Benn, 1949 (1930–2006), was an educator and romance novelist. Although she did not write her first novel until she was fifty-five—under her maiden name, June Barraclough—she went on to publish twenty-five novels. Christine Brooke-Rose, 1946 (b. 1923), is a poet, novelist, critic, and academic. She went to the University of Paris Vincennes in 1968 as lecturer and served as professor of English language and literature there from 1975 to 1989. From the 1960s, her novels became increasingly experimental, and one critic said she used language “more as a concrete artefact than as a vehicle of communication and information.”4 Averil Cameron, 1958 (b. 1940), went to King’s College London in 1965 as an assistant lecturer, becoming professor of ancient history in 1978 and then professor of late antique and Byzantine studies in 1989. In 1994, she was elected

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warden of Keble, becoming the second woman to head a former men’s college. (Marilyn Butler, St. Hilda’s, was the first.) She was made fellow of the British Academy in 1981 and of the Society of Antiquaries in 1982. Sheila Cassidy, 1958 (b. 1937), a lecturer and psychotherapist, was medical director of St. Luke’s Hospice in Plymouth from 1982 to 1993 and a specialist in psychosocial oncology at the Plymouth Oncology Centre from 1993 to 2002. In 1971, she went to Chile, where she was arrested for treating a wounded revolutionary in 1975 and imprisoned and tortured for two months before being released. Her personal account of the ordeal helped publicize human rights abuses in Chile at that time. Susan Cooper, 1953 (b. 1935), has won almost every major British and American award for children’s writing, and her fantasy literature for children, which draws on the themes, myths, and legends of ancient Britain, has been particularly well received. She has also written essays, drama, screenplays, and biography. Ann Dally, 1943 (1926–2007), physician and medical historian, got a medical degree after university and then worked as a private psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Her first-rate medical work has been overshadowed by disciplinary action taken against her in 1987 by the General Medical Council. She was censured for providing maintenance treatment to heroin addicts during the 1970s when the medical establishment increasingly disapproved of this practice. Dally felt she could not turn her back on suffering individuals, and today the treatment she used is considered a viable option for dealing with drug dependence. Margaret Forster, 1957 (b. 1938), is primarily a writer of biographies and novels, and her novel Georgy Girl (1965) was turned into a successful film for which she coauthored the script.

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Many of her novels revolve around the social dynamics of family or small-group relationships, and many also reflect her feminist concerns. Hazel Fox, 1946 (b. 1928), was called to the bar in 1950 and practiced from 1950 to 1954. She served as lecturer in jurisprudence at Somerville between 1951 and 1958 and came back to her old college as fellow in 1976. Between 1982 and 1989, she directed the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. She was appointed CMG in 2006 for services to international law. Victoria Glendinning, 1956 (b. 1937), published six accomplished biographies between 1969 and 1992 that were praised for their painstaking research and critical evaluations. She has also written fiction and contributed numerous articles of literary criticism. She was awarded a CBE in 1998 and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Celia Green, 1953 (b. 1935), founded the Institute of Psychophysical Research in Oxford, and her work has concentrated on empirical and philosophical issues. Her ideas have not always been popular in intellectual circles, and she founded Oxford Forum in 1999, an organization focused on the expression of dissident ideas in philosophy and psychology. Barbara Harvey, 1946 (b. 1928), taught at Edinburgh and Queen Mary College, London, before returning to Somerville as history tutor in 1955, becoming fellow in 1956, and retiring in 1993. She was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1964 and of the British Academy in 1982. She was made CBE in 1997 for services to medieval history. Margaret Jay, 1958 (b. 1939), the daughter of James Callaghan, former British prime minister, worked as a television journalist and presenter. From 1988 to 1992, she was director of the National Aids Trust and in 1992 was created a life peer, Baroness Jay of Paddington. Between 1998 and 2001, she served as the leader of the House of Lords.

Onora O’Neill, 1959 (b. 1941), earned a doctorate at Harvard and became professor of philosophy at Essex in 1987. In 1992, she was elected principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. She became a fellow of the British Academy in 1993, was appointed CBE in 1995, and was created a life peer, Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve, in 1999. Baroness O’Neill has published widely in political philosophy and ethics, international justice, and bioethics. She received an honorary DCL from Oxford in 2003. Esther Rantzen, 1959 (b. 1940), went to the BBC in 1963 as a sound-effects person and rose through the ranks to become a producer/presenter of That’s Life, a consumer program that ran for twentyone years. In 1986, she was instrumental in launching ChildLine, a free twentyfour-hour helpline for children and young people in distress or danger. More than one million children have received counseling through this charity. She has also been involved with numerous charities for the disabled and was appointed OBE in 1991. Caroline Seebohm, 1959 (b. 1940), Victoria Glendinning’s sister, is an authority on traditional English and American decorating. She has been the senior writer for House and Garden and has turned out beautifully produced books on the English country house and English gardens. Frances Stewart, 1958 (no b.d.), was senior research officer in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at Oxford between 1972 and 1993. Between 1993 and 2003, she was director of Oxford’s International Development Centre. Since 1975, she has been a fellow of Somerville and is currently university professor in development economics. Anne E. Stoddart, 1956 (b. 1937) entered the Foreign Office in 1960 and served in Berlin, Turkey, Colombo, Strasbourg, and Geneva. She is now retired from the diplomatic service. She was made CMG in 1996.

Shirley Summerskill, 1950 (b. 1931), a physician, joined the House of Commons in 1964 as a Labour candidate, serving until 1983. From 1983 to 1991, she was a medical officer in the Blood Transfusion Service. She is the daughter of Edith Summerskill (1901–1980), a physician and Labour MP who tirelessly worked for women’s rights. Margaret Thatcher, 1943 (b. 1925), who entered Parliament in 1959, was elected to lead the Conservative Party in 1975, becoming the first woman party leader in British politics. In 1979, she became Britain’s first woman prime minister and served in that capacity until 1990. She received the Order of Merit in 1990 and was created a life peer—Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven—in 1992. Anne Warburton, 1947 (b. 1927), served as a diplomat between 1957 and 1985. In 1985, she became president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, retiring in 1994. She was appointed Dame Commander, Royal Victorian Order, in 1979 for service to the queen. Shirley Williams, 1948 (b. 1930), the daughter of Vera Brittain, became a Labour MP in 1964, holding important posts between 1967 and 1979. In 1981, she cofounded the Social Democratic Party (SDP), serving as president between 1982 and 1988, but lost her parliamentary seat in 1983. She moved to the United States after her second marriage in 1987 and held the post of professor of elective politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government between 1988 and 2000. She was created a life peer—Baroness Williams of Crosby—in 1993 and was the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2001 to 2004.

St. Hugh’s Patricia Beer (1924–1999), among the “wisest and wryest poets of her generation,” got her BA from the University of London and then went to St. Hugh’s for a BLitt.5 After teaching

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for a number of years, she chose to devote herself full time to writing in the early 1960s. Many of her poems relate to theology and death, but “she is that rare phenomenon, a religious poet stripped of the blurring consolations of religion.”6 Ruth Bidgood, 1943 (b. 1922), is an awardwinning poet whose work deals with the physical and emotional landscape of her native Wales. She has been called “the poet of the raw material of rural life.”7 Brigid Brophy, 1947 (1929–1995), shot to fame in the 1960s with her novels, articles, and television appearances. Outspoken, outrageous, irreverent, and pugnacious, she “embodied the values and even the hijinks of the 1960s to perfection.”8 She won a scholarship to St. Hugh’s but lasted only four terms before being sent down. Some say she was dismissed for being drunk in chapel while others point to sexual misconduct; she once said that before her expulsion she had been drunk for six weeks, “and yet not one single person in authority at Oxford asked: Why are you so unhappy? Not one.”9 She claimed never to have got over the injustice. After she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1979, she ceased to be a prominent public figure, and her literary output dwindled considerably. Angela Bull, 1959 (b. 1936), graduated from the University of Edinburgh and was a postgraduate student at St. Hugh’s between 1959 and 1961. She has written many books of fiction and biographies for young people. She enjoys using specific historical backgrounds in her fiction and has drawn on the Victorian period in particular. Mary Clayton, 1953 (no b.d.), has taught English and history at universities and secondary schools in the United States. She is also a novelist, and her works often make use of her interest in and knowledge of the medieval world, which she used to particularly good effect in a highly regarded historical romance trilogy. She writes under her own name, as well as under the pseudonyms Mary Lide and Mary Lomer.

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Anne Hudson (b. 1938) left St. Hugh’s with a first in English and went to LMH in 1961 as lecturer, becoming tutor and fellow in 1963. In 1989, Oxford awarded her an ad hominem professorship in medieval English, a mark of great distinction given only to readers and lecturers of outstanding merit. She became a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1976 and of the British Academy in 1988. Sheila Kitzinger (b. 1929) received a research degree in anthropology from St. Hugh’s in 1956 and has since become known as a social anthropologist and birth educator. She has published many best-selling books on pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, and, as the mother of five daughters, she is well suited to address those topics. She was appointed MBE in 1982. Barbara Levick, 1950 (b. 1932), is a distinguished historian and a prolific writer on Roman history. She became a fellow of St. Hilda’s in 1959 and is now retired. She is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Ursula Owen, 1956 (b. 1937), worked as an editor after leaving college. In 1974, she cofounded Virago Press, which was the first mass-market publisher for women and has achieved distinction as an international publisher of women’s literature. Since 1993, she has been editor and chief executive of the Index on Censorship. She was awarded an OBE in 2004. Margaret Potter, 1944 (1926–1998), wrote more than fifty novels in a variety of genres and numerous short stories under her own name and as Anne Melville, Margaret Newman, and Anne Betteridge. She attracted a wide readership for her meticulously researched historical novels and for her six-volume saga of the Lorimer family. Monique Viner, 1944 (1926–2006), was called to the bar in 1950 and appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1979. Between 1990 and 1999, she served as circuit judge and was awarded a CBE in 1995. Rachel Waterstone, 1942 (no b.d.), received a

PhD from the University of Birmingham in 1950. She became a member of the Consumers’ Association in 1966, served as deputy chair from 1979 until 1982, and chair from 1982 to 1990. For her service on behalf of consumers, she was appointed DBE in 1990. Rosemary Woolf, 1943 (d. 1978), went to University College, Hull, in 1949. In 1961, she accepted an appointment to Somerville as English tutor and remained there until her death. She was an outstanding medievalist and an exceptional scholar, and, Rachel Trickett noted: “she knew how to enjoy life as well as work and loved fast cars, good food, films and travel.”10

St. Hilda’s Nina Beachcroft, 1950 (no b.d.), worked as a journalist after college, but writing novels is her primary occupation—juvenile fantasies that offer realistic depictions of children. Neil Philip of the London Times says there is no “portentous mysticism” in her plots; she “uses magic lightly to explore the theme of control.”11 Marilyn Butler, 1955 (b. 1937), has had a distinguished academic career after graduating with a first in English. She married in 1962, began work on her doctorate, and had three sons within three-and-a-half years. After receiving her DPhil in 1966, she lectured and taught at various Oxford colleges and wrote books that highlighted her interest in the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. Between 1973 and 1985, she was fellow and tutor of English literature at St. Hugh’s. In 1986, she was appointed to the King Edward VII Chair of English Literature at Cambridge and taught and lectured on the history of ideas and of science. She returned to Oxford in 1993 as rector of Exeter College, the first woman to head a former men’s college in either Oxford or Cambridge, and retired in 2004. Butler holds many honorary degrees and is a foreign honorary member of the U.S. Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fiona Caldicott, 1960 (no b.d.), a psychotherapist, worked as a consultant in Birmingham and in 1982 became senior clinical lecturer in psychotherapy at the University of Birmingham. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (1995) and was the first woman president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In 1996, she was elected to lead Somerville and was made DBE in the same year. Celia Goodhart, 1957 (b. 1939), worked as a civil servant after college and then as history tutor, Westminster Tutors and Queen’s College, between 1966 and 1981. In 1992, she became principal of Queen’s and served there until 1996. She was named chair of the Family Planning Association in 1999 and has been an exceptional public servant, serving on numerous boards and committees. Catherine Pestell Hughes, 1952 (no b.d.), had a career in the Diplomatic Service that spanned the years 1955 to 1989. In 1989, she was elected principal of Somerville and presided over the tumultuous period before the college ended its single-sex status in 1994. She was made CMG in 1984, named an honorary fellow of St. Hugh’s in 1988, and retired from Somerville in 1996. Jenny Joseph, 1950 (b. 1932), had already established herself as a poet before leaving university and has continued to write and publish ever since, in addition to raising a family, teaching, broadcasting, and traveling extensively. Two lines from her poem “Warning” are familiar to scores of people who may never have heard of the poet: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple / With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.” Joseph is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Angela Lambert, 1958 (b. 1940), a journalist, historian, and novelist, has published two well-received social histories of aristocratic British life. The Indian Summer of the Aristocracy, 1880–1918, was set just before World War I and 1939: The Last Season of Peace before World War II. One of her

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novels, A Rather English Marriage (1992), was turned into a television production starring Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney. Kate Millett (b. 1934) graduated with a BA from the University of Minnesota in 1956 and went to St. Hilda’s for postgraduate work, receiving an MA in 1958. She earned a PhD from Columbia in 1970 and turned her doctoral thesis into Sexual Politics (1970), a book that became a seminal work for radical feminism and transformed Kate into a feminist icon. Although she is best known for her feminist writings and her homosexuality, she has also been an outspoken activist for change in social—not just sexual—attitudes. Gillian Shephard, 1958 (b. 1940), was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative MP for South West Norfolk in 1987 and served in a variety of influential positions until she stepped down in 2005. In 2005, she was created a life peer, Baroness Shephard of Northwold. Rosemary Spencer, 1959 (b. 1941), entered the Foreign Office in 1962 and held many posts, primarily in Africa and Europe. Between 1996 and 2001, she served as ambassador to the Netherlands. She is now retired. In 1991, Spencer was appointed CMG and DCMG in 1999. Ann Thwaite, 1952 (b. 1932), is an awardwinning biographer, educator, and children’s writer. She is married to the poet Anthony Thwaite.

St. Anne’s Margaret Bacon (no b.d.) got her BA in 1952 and has been a writer since 1961. She is primarily a novelist, although she has also turned out a fictional biography and a travel book on Guyana, which arose from a period that she spent in Georgetown, Guyana, as a teacher (1959–1961). Sister Wendy Beckett, 1950 (b. 1930), is a contradiction in that she is a contemplative and reclusive nun who

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achieved widespread popularity and critical acclaim for a series of television programs on art that were extremely successful on both sides of the Atlantic. She moved to South Africa after college to teach, but, when she was found to be epileptic, her order allowed her to return to England to live in seclusion. She obtained permission from her order to study art history and published a book, hoping it would bring some money to her religious community. A television producer was struck by what he read, and apart from the resulting television success, Sister Wendy has written companion books for the television series, as well as other art histories. She leads the disciplined life of a nun but one in which art plays a significant role. Gillian Beer (b. 1935), a St. Anne’s student in the mid-1950s, has spent her distinguished academic career largely at Cambridge, where she began as an assistant lecturer in English in 1966. A fellow of Girton, she was professor of English from 1989 to 1994 and was then appointed to replace Marilyn Butler (St. Hilda’s 1955) as King Edward VII Professor of English Literature, retiring in 2002. During the period she held the English literature chair, she was also president of Clare Hall, a college for advanced study at Cambridge. In 1991, she was elected a fellow of the British Academy, serving as vice-president between 1994 and 1996, and was made DBE in 1998. She received an honorary doctorate from Oxford in 2005. Jennifer Dawson (1929–2000) got her BA in 1952 and became a psychiatric social worker and an author. She won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1961 for Ha-Ha, a disturbing portrait of mental illness and institutional horror that was produced on the London stage and on radio. Judasland, her last novel, is a black comedy set in Oxford and won the Fawcett Prize in 1990. Janice Elliott (1931–1995) left college with a BA in 1953 and began her writing career as a journalist. Reviewing for the Sunday

Telegraph (as well as her marriage to a businessman) gave her enough financial independence to begin writing novels, of which she published twenty-two, as well as five children’s books and a collection of short stories. Some of her novels verged on the bizarre (in Dr. Gruber’s Daughter, Hitler is alive and living in a North Oxford attic), but they consistently received good reviews. U[rsula] A[skham] Fanthorpe (b. 1929) got her BA from St. Anne’s in 1953. Following the publication of her first collection of poems when she was almost fifty, she has gone on to become a poet of distinction. She was the first woman nominated for the post of professor of poetry at Oxford, was elected to the Royal Society of Literature in 1988, and made CBE in 2001 for her services to poetry. Her poems often depict people on the fringe, without power; one reviewer said that “the prowess of Fanthorpe, and it is considerable, is in displaying powers of evocation concurrently with the crucial trait of being utterly unsentimental.”12 Anna Home, 1956 (b. 1938), joined BBC radio in 1960 and became executive producer, Children’s Drama Unit, in 1970. Between 1986 and 1998, she was head of Children’s Programmes, BBC TV, and she has been the chief executive of the Children’s Film and Television Foundation since 1998. She has received many awards for distinguished service to children’s television and was appointed OBE in 1993. Elizabeth Jennings, 1944 (1926–2001), one of Britain’s most popular poets, worked in the Oxford City Library for eight years but began to concentrate more fully on her poetry and free-lance writing around 1961. She was the only female contributor to an anthology of poems that launched what became known as the Movement, a group of writers (including Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin) whose work was “predominantly anti-romantic, witty, rational, sardonic.”13 Jennings never felt entirely comfortable with the label and moved toward developing her own voice,

which was far removed from that of the Movement poets. Unafraid to tackle uncomfortable subjects, she often wrote about religious faith (her Catholicism was an important part of her life), loneliness, friendship, and vulnerability. She lived in Oxford and became a familiar and much-loved figure there and an important mentor to countless young poets. She was made CBE in 1992. Diana Wynne Jones, 1953 (b. 1934), married after college and had three sons between 1958 and 1963. She didn’t begin her serious writing career until her youngest son went to school and has published widely since. She is a well-respected writer of contemporary children’s fantasy, a medium that she believes is ideal for uncovering psychological truths. Penelope Lively, 1951 (b. 1933), a prolific writer for both children and adults, has won Britain’s most prestigious awards in both categories: the Carnegie Medal in 1973 for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and the Booker Prize in 1987 for Moon Tiger. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1985) and was made OBE in 1989. Elizabeth Mavor, 1947 (b. 1927), is a novelist and historical biographer; one of her novels was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Her output is not large, but her books, according to two critics, “nevertheless represent a significant contribution to contemporary English letters. Her novels demonstrate a variety of fictional techniques as well as an ability to blend the world of nature and myth with the ordinary lives of men and women.”14 She became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1989. Juliet Mitchell, 1959 (b. 1940), is a provocative theorist who has written about her special interests in psychoanalysis and gender. She trained as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst and was in private practice in London between 1978 and 1996. Professor of psychoanalysis and gender studies at Jesus College, Cambridge, she has been a visiting professor at numerous universities

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and has also lectured widely in the United Kingdom and the United States. Jill Paton Walsh, 1955 (b. 1937), is an award-winning author of novels for both children and adults. Because she wants to appeal to readers of all ages, she prefers writing about experiences that adults and children have in common. Dorothy Sayers’s literary trustees commissioned Paton Walsh to complete a Lord Peter Wimsey manuscript that Sayers had left unfinished, which was published in 1998 as Thrones, Dominations. In 2003, she wrote another Lord Peter novel—A Presumption of Death—that was loosely based on “The Wimsey Papers,” which Sayers wrote for the Spectator. Valerie Louise Pearl (b. 1926) was a postwar student at St. Anne’s and became reader of history in London (1968–76) and then professor of history of London (1976–81) at University College, London. Between 1981 and 1995, she served as president of New Hall, Cambridge. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Gillian Reynolds, 1954 (b. 1935), a radio and television journalist, has been radio critic for the Daily Telegraph since 1975. She is a fellow of the Radio Academy (1990) and the Royal Television Society (1996) and was made MBE in 1999. Joanna Richardson, 1943 (1925–2008), was a biographer, literary critic, and historian. She had a special interest in France and wrote biographies of some of France’s most noted authors: Verlaine, Baudelaire, Colette, and Gautier. She was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1987 and won the Prix Goncourt de la biographie in 1989 for the French edition of Judith Gautier (1987), the first time this prestigious honor went to a non-French author. She also wrote a biography of her tutor, Enid Starkie, in 1973. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Pauline Stainer, 1960 (b. 1941), is an award-winning poet who did not publish until she was forty-eight. She has been described as a poet who demonstrates that “perceptual precision and intelligent

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inquiry can live alongside passion, compassion and fascination with language.”15 Joy Whitby (b. 1930) is a television producer and the creator of Play School, a children’s program aimed at preschool viewers that became one of the BBC’s longest- running shows. She has also set up Grasshopper Productions Ltd., which offers quality books, DVDs, and videos for children. Peggy Woodford, 1956 (b. 1937), a free-lance writer since 1966, concentrates on fiction and biographies for adults and young adults. In writing for teenagers, she has said, the material “should be adult in

every way; the only consideration to be borne always in mind is that the theme and subject matter should appeal to and interest the adolescent.”16 Janet Young, 1944 (1926–2002), became the only woman in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet and the first woman leader of the House of Lords (1981–1983). Between 1957 and 1972, she sat on the Oxford City Council and in 1971 was created a life peer—Baroness Young of Farnworth. A woman of formidable intelligence, she created controversy with her highly conservative views on sexual morality and her implacable opposition to gay sex.

Appendix 5

Principals and Staff, 1945–1955

Somerville

scientific papers during her twenty-two years at Somerville.2 During her tenure, she worked hard to bring in more people with scientific interests, at both the junior and senior levels, and succeeded to such a degree that Somerville gained a reputation as a place where science was valued.3 In contrast to her bookish and retiring predecessor, Janet Vaughan was a woman of great stamina who managed her demanding multiple roles as principal, scientist, university committeewoman, medical consultant, wife, and mother with such skill that she always seemed accessible to whomever needed her attention. On her retirement in 1967, Dr. Vaughan received Oxford’s highest honor, the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. (She had already been made Dame of the British Empire in 1957 and would be elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1979.)

In 1943, Helen Darbishire voiced her wish to retire from Somerville so that she could devote more time to literary scholarship. Dean Vera Farnell explained that the principal also had felt for some time “that the complexities and uncertainties of the world that would follow on the war would need a younger and more vigorous hand upon the helm” (Miss Darbishire was sixty-two in 1943).1 Somerville did not release her immediately, however, and she remained at her post until the summer of 1945. After her retirement, Miss Darbishire published scholarly editions of Milton and Wordsworth and served as trustee and chair of Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s Lake District home from 1799 to the end of 1807. She was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1947, received honorary doctorates from the universities of Durham and London, and was appointed CBE in 1955. Helen Darbishire died in 1961, aged eighty. On February 6, 1945, Somerville unanimously elected Dr. Janet Vaughan (Somerville 1919) to succeed Miss Darbishire. Janet Vaughan was forty-six when she accepted the principalship and only the third married woman to head an Oxford women’s society (the first being Bertha Johnson of the Home-Students and the second Esther Burrows of St. Hilda’s, a widow). She was also the first scientist to be principal and spent as much time on her laboratory research as she could arrange, with the result that she published forty-eight

Lady Margaret Hall Lynda Grier elected to retire from LMH in 1945 after serving as principal for twentyfour years, but she did not retire from public life. From 1948 to 1950, she served as the chief representative of the British Council in China, the first woman to be offered the post, and was awarded the CBE in 1951 for her services. In 1953, she became the first Cambridge woman graduate to receive the university’s highest distinction, an honorary LL.D. Lynda Grier died in 1967 at the age of eighty-seven. LMH chose Lucy Sutherland (Somerville

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1925), fellow and tutor of her old college since 1928, as Miss Grier’s successor. An outstanding historian of eighteenthcentury England, Miss Sutherland was a dynamic woman, described as “brisk but not brusque.”4 She poured her considerable energies into the college but never neglected her research. Like Janet Vaughan, she was self-disciplined and knew how to plan her time efficiently so that she could get through a large number of tasks each day and still reserve time for students and friends. Lucy Sutherland’s attention to detail, quick grasp of administrative problems, and financial flair made her a valued member of the numerous committees on which she served, both inside and outside the university. In 1957, Oxford offered her the chance to become Regius Professor of History, but because she could not accept and retain the headship of LMH, she declined, though not without an agonizing struggle.5 Lady Margaret Hall knew it was fortunate to have kept her. In 1960, she became the first woman to act as pro-vice-chancellor of the university and relished her nine years in the role. She was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1954 and appointed DBE in 1969. After her retirement from LMH in 1971, Oxford chose to honor her, as it had Janet Vaughan, with a DCL.

St. Hugh’s Barbara Gwyer retired from St. Hugh’s in 1946 after twenty-two years as the head. At the 1946 Gaudy, Miss Gwyer described herself as “the last of the amateur Principals,” which meant to her that “we are moving out of the adolescent stage of Women’s College life in Oxford” and producing “among our Heads and Fellows women whose achievements place them on a level with the men.”6 She was too modest about her credentials. To be sure, she did not make a mark in the world outside Oxford, but she was the right person to lead St. Hugh’s when she took the job in 1924. Miss Gwyer came on board during a turbulent period in St. Hugh’s

history—after the crisis described in Chapter 14—and gave the college stability and guidance just when those qualities were most needed. On her death in 1974, at the age of ninety-three, she continued to benefit her old college by bequeathing to it a large collection of books, her desk, and Annie Rogers’s worktable. For her successor, St. Hugh’s turned to Evelyn E. S. Proctor (Somerville 1915), who had been history tutor at the college since 1925 and a fellow since 1926. Miss Proctor was a shy, serious woman who often appeared remote to her students but could be unexpectedly (to their minds) generous and sensitive. She could also appear formidable to her colleagues, and the senior common room was not always a comfortable place during her tenure. When Miss Proctor died in 1980, Rachel Trickett, then principal, did not dwell on negatives but paid tribute to her passionate loyalty to St. Hugh’s and “her stubborn opposition to any trespass on the College’s independence.”7

St. Anne’s Eleanor Plumer retired from St. Anne’s in 1953. She moved to London and involved herself in many causes, particularly improving the position of women in the Church of England. An avid traveler, she went all over the world and visited Japan only nine months before she died in 1967, aged eighty-two. Mary Ogilvie (Somerville 1919) succeeded Miss Plumer as principal in 1953, and her thirteen-year leadership brought administrative and physical coherence to her college. After graduating from Somerville in 1922, she had married Frederick Ogilvie, a don at Balliol, and for many years supported him in his distinguished academic career, which included holding a chair of economics at Edinburgh, serving as vice-chancellor at Queen’s University, Belfast, and acting as principal of Jesus College, Oxford. After losing one of her three sons in a climbing accident in 1948 and her husband a year later, Lady Ogilvie began to forge her

own career, which first took her to Leeds University as tutor to women students and then to Oxford to lead St. Anne’s. Described as both “magisterial and motherly, and always very accessible,” Lady Ogilvie “had a clear vision of what St. Anne’s should be, and worked hard to achieve it.”8

St. Hilda’s Julia de Lacy Mann retired from St. Hilda’s in 1955 to pursue her scholarly interest in the history of the English textile industry. In her twenty-seven years as principal, Miss Mann had largely set aside her own academic work in order to devote time and energy to St. Hilda’s. The Oxford Magazine offered a tribute to her unselfish leadership: “During a period marked by considerable changes in the position of women and of women’s colleges in the University, her imperturbable and outstanding administrative ability have enabled the youngest and smallest of the women’s societies successfully to meet these new demands.”9 She was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and received an honorary doctorate from Oxford in 1973. The college elected one of its own, Kathleen Major, to be the new principal in 1955, thus making her the only nonSomervillian to head an Oxford women’s college in the 1950s. She had read modern history at St. Hilda’s between 1925 and 1929 and had become the diocesan archivist to the bishop of Lincoln in 1936. During her ten years in Lincoln, she was acknowledged the leading expert on the medieval history of both the diocese and its cathedral. Miss Major came back to Oxford University in 1945 as lecturer, and later reader, in diplomatic (the critical study of the forms of documents) in the School of Modern History. On her return, St. Hilda’s named her an honorary research fellow and then elected her to a professorial fellowship in 1948 before selecting her to lead the college. When Miss Major retired in 1960, she was appointed to a special chair in medieval history at Nottingham

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University in recognition of her distinction as a historian, a post she held from 1966 to 1971. In 1977, the British Academy elected her to a fellowship.

Staffing at the Women’s Colleges The Oxford women principals recognized that taking in more undergraduates not only required additional accommodation but also necessitated larger staffs. How to secure new academic appointments with limited resources was a problem that bedeviled all of them. One solution was to attract promising young scholars as lecturers and assistant tutors, positions that came with lower salaries than fellowships. Somerville took this avenue, for example, and in time, a number of these appointees became notable additions to the staff as tutors and fellows. The university provided another solution. Many Oxford colleges, both men’s and women’s, lacked money not only to hire new people but also to raise the salaries of its existing fellows. In postwar Britain, salaries at Oxford and other universities were dropping behind those of comparable professions, and even the richer Oxford colleges were hard-pressed to match the increases for their fellows. The women’s colleges were particularly hard hit because they lacked endowments to support higher salaries, but they did not want to raise their fees to a level that would be prohibitive for many students. To deal with the crisis, the university came up with a scheme in 1946 to improve academic salaries so that new people could be recruited and existing staff would not be tempted to look for better-paying jobs elsewhere. The Common University Fund (CUF), which derived its money from taxation of colleges, had heretofore been used solely for university purposes. In order to use CUF money to benefit college tutors, Oxford proposed to give a certain number of them university lectureships, whereby they would receive money from the CUF to supplement their college salaries. The plan was such a success that in 1949, the vice-chancellor

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proposed giving university lectureships to all intercollegiate lecturers and asking the University Grants Committee (UGC) to underwrite it. He justified the request on the grounds that, at Oxford, all public lectures were given by college men and women and not, as in most universities, by people in the employ of the institution. The additional money would go to the college fellows themselves, which was a way to get around the UGC policy of not giving money directly to colleges. The scheme was particularly valuable for the women’s colleges and the poorer men’s colleges because it meant that they no longer had to provide the complete stipend for their fellows. Being free from this financial burden also meant that the colleges could now afford to appoint more fellows and thus increase their teaching strength.

Somerville Somerville possessed a distinguished staff when Janet Vaughan came on board in 1945, but the ranks were thinning. Lucy Sutherland left to become principal of LMH in 1945; Enid Starkie, fellow in modern languages, would be elevated to a university readership in 1946; and Vera Farnell, vice-principal and also tutor in modern languages, elected to retire in 1947. To help fill the gap in modern languages, Somerville’s largest school, the college appointed Elizabeth Tyler (LMH 1936) as French tutor in 1946 and named her an official fellow the following year. She became Elizabeth Armstrong after her marriage in 1953 and under this name, published learned and imaginative books and articles on sixteenth-century France. Kathleen Sarginson, appointed Somerville’s first fellow in mathematics in 1947, was succeeded in 1955 by Anne Cobbe (Somerville 1939). Dr. Cobbe became an outstanding tutor and valued member of the governing body, and her sudden death in 1971 at the age of fifty-one was a great blow to the college. May McKisack left to become professor of history at Westfield College, London, in 1955, and her position was offered to Barbara Harvey (Somerville

1946), a former pupil. Miss Harvey, tutor and fellow in history at Somerville for thirty-eight years, served as a university lecturer in history and became a fellow of the British Academy in 1982. Somerville also expanded its staff in 1946 by filling two endowed research fellowships—the Lady Carlisle and Mary Somerville fellowships—that had remained vacant during the war. The Lady Carlisle went to Lotte Labowsky, holder of a doctorate from Heidelberg and a specialist in medieval and Renaissance studies. Elizabeth Anscombe, who achieved a first in greats from St. Hugh’s in 1941, was appointed to the Mary Somerville fellowship. Philippa Foot, who found Miss Anscombe a stimulating colleague, described her as “very intransigent—no other college would look at her.”10 Peter Conradi, in a biography of Iris Murdoch, said that “if other colleges were less appreciative of her [Anscombe’s] remarkable qualities than was Somerville, her mix of bohemianism and fiercely expressed scorn for the frivolity of the Oxford philosophical faculty may help account for this.”11 Anscombe, a bold and original thinker, would become an internationally renowned figure in twentieth-century philosophy, and her first major work, Intention (1957), is considered a classic. She left Oxford in 1970 to accept a chair of philosophy at Cambridge, a position she retained until 1986. Her Times obituary described her as “a giant in the world of twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy.”12 Olive Sayce, Ursula Brown, Jean Banister, Agatha Ramm, and Rosemary Syfret were brought into Somerville as assistant tutors and lecturers between 1946 and 1952; all eventually became fellows.13 Philippa Foot (Somerville 1939) and Margaret Hall (Somerville 1929) both came to Somerville in 1947. Foot joined the staff as an assistant lecturer in philosophy, becoming fellow and university lecturer in 1950, and remained at the college until 1969. She resigned her fellowship and in 1974 accepted a position as professor of philosophy at UCLA. In 1988, she became Griffin Professor of

Philosophy at UCLA and is an emeritus fellow. Regarded as an eminent moral philosopher, she has written books with such titles as Virtues and Vices (1978), Moral Relativism (1979), and Natural Goodness (2001). Margaret Hall was appointed lecturer in economics and became fellow and tutor in 1949, retiring in 1975. She obtained an excellent reputation as a tutor, greatly influencing the lives of several generations of women students, combining “immense intellectual rigor . . . with disarming femininity.”14 Hall was known outside Oxford as the author of numerous publications on economics and as a member of national bodies concerned with economic development.

Lady Margaret Hall One of the longest-serving members of staff was Dorothy Everett (Girton), a fellow in English language and literature since 1928 and a university lecturer in Middle English since 1930. In 1948, she became the first holder of the university readership in English language but died five years later at the age of fifty-nine. Kathleen Lea (LMH 1921), who had been English tutor since 1936 and fellow since 1937, served as vice-principal from 1947 until her retirement in 1971. Her devotion to LMH was complete, and her impact on students was considerable. She could be an exacting and sometimes impatient tutor, but many of her students “grew to be thankful for a discipline which forced them to read patiently and pleasurably before they began to be clever.”15 A number of women who became eminent in their fields joined the LMH staff between 1945 and 1955. Dr. Anne Whiteman (Somerville 1937), history tutor and then fellow from 1946 to 1985, established a reputation for meticulous scholarship in her work on seventeenth-century England. She was also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Dr. Wilma Crowther (LMH 1937) was appointed as lecturer in natural science in 1951, becoming fellow and tutor in 1959. Her special interest in African desert

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mammals took her on numerous research trips to Africa, and she published widely in genetics and the geography of animal distribution. Her work was described as “of the highest quality” and “truly reflected the enormous breadth of her knowledge.”16 Lilian “Anne” Jeffrey (Newnham), a distinguished Hellenist, served as fellow and tutor in ancient history from 1952 to 1980. She was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1965. Two medical doctors became affiliated with LMH in the early 1950s. Dr. Margaret Jennings (LMH 1924) first earned a medical degree after college and then trained as a bacteriologist. She began working under Howard Florey in 1936 at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford and was part of the team that developed penicillin as an effective antibiotic. In 1952, she became the first holder of the Florey Fellowship at LMH, which was endowed by a group of British pharmaceutical companies. She also held the post of university lecturer from 1945 to 1972 and was made a supernumerary fellow at LMH in 1954. In 1967, Dr. Jennings married Howard Florey (now Baron Florey, after receiving a life peerage in 1965), but he died suddenly in 1968. Lady Florey retired in 1972.17 Dr. Alice Stewart (Girton), an epidemiologist of great distinction, was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1946, becoming only the ninth woman and the youngest at the time to join that body. She was a reader in social medicine at Oxford and a professorial fellow of LMH from 1953 to 1974. In 1956, she published her findings that demonstrated a link between fetal X-rays and childhood cancers, but she had to continue gathering data for twenty more years before U.S. and British medical associations agreed to recommend that doctors should not routinely x-ray pregnant women. She also fought a lifelong battle to expose the dangers of low-level radiation to workers in the nuclear industry, a fight that did not endear her to proponents of nuclear technology but that did lead to reductions in permitted levels of radiation for employees in nuclear

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facilities. The New York Times described her in 1990 as “perhaps the [US] Energy Department’s most influential and feared scientific critic.”18 In 1986, Dr. Stewart received the Right Livelihood Award from the Swedish Parliament, an award given the day before the Nobel Prize ceremony to those who have worked for the betterment of society.

St. Hugh’s Mary Warnock (LMH 1942), just beginning her distinguished career as a philosopher and educator, was appointed to a lectureship at St. Hugh’s in 1949 and did not find the senior common room particularly welcoming. She sensed a great divide between the old guard and the younger women who were coming onto the staff after the war, and she felt that tension was always evident when all the fellows were gathered together.19 Susan Wood (Somerville 1942), who came as a lecturer in history at the same time, concurred with her new colleague, describing the SCR as unworldly and cloistered.20 Both newcomers found that the internal crisis of 1924 (see Chapter 14) was still considered too painful to be talked of, and they were warned never to bring up the subject among the fellows. The atmosphere grew less formal and constrained during the 1950s when older fellows retired and younger women took their places Dr. Ida Busbridge (Royal Holloway College, London) became mathematics tutor in 1939 and, until the women’s colleges were able to appoint their own tutors in the subject, for many years had sole charge of all women students reading mathe­matics. She was considered an outstanding lecturer and demanding tutor. Clare Richardson (St. Hugh’s 1954) recalled that Dr. Busbridge kept assigning more and more work every week to her and her tutorial partner until they finally gaped at her in astonishment. “Miss Busbridge just smiled and told us that she had been trying to find out how much we could cope with, and now she knew.”21 Dr. Agnes Headlam-Morley (Somerville 1921) came to St. Hugh’s as tutor in modern

history and politics in 1931, becoming a fellow in 1933. When she was elected Montague Burton Professor of International Relations in 1948, she had the honor of being the first Oxford woman graduate to hold a chair at the university. Many St. Hugh’s students remembered her as one of their most engaging and stimulating tutors. Dr. Madge Adam entered St. Hugh’s in 1931 and became the first woman student to achieve a first class in the final honor school of physics. In 1937, she returned to St. Hugh’s as assistant tutor in physics and also began work at the university observatory. Finding her duties as tutor too time-consuming, Dr. Adam resigned her fellowship at St. Hugh’s in 1957 to devote all her attention to the observatory. She became internationally known for her work in solar physics, and as her Times obituary noted, she “set new standards of accuracy and clarified much that previously had been obscure and contradictory.”22 Her personality was as ­gentle and self-effacing as her mind was hard and precise, and she was a valued presence in St. Hugh’s as a research fellow and member of the governing body. Mary Warnock’s career took her from St. Hugh’s in 1966 to the Oxford High School for Girls in north Oxford as headmistress. She reluctantly left that job in 1972 because she had a specific book she wanted to write and because she wanted to devote more time to Hertford College, Oxford, where her husband had been elected principal in 1970. In 1985, she was elected to head Girton College, Cambridge, a position she kept until 1992. Mary Warnock has also been a member of or chaired numerous national committees of inquiry and has written on both philosophical and educational topics. In 1984, she was appointed DBE and awarded a life peerage in 1985, becoming Baroness Warnock of Weeke. Marjorie Sweeting and Rachel Trickett were two other notable appointments to St. Hugh’s in the early 1950s. Marjorie Sweeting (Newnham) became a fellow of St. Hugh’s in 1954 and from 1977 to 1987was a university reader in physical geography. Her work on limestone earned her a high reputation

as an earth scientist, and she carried out the first extensive western study of China’s limestone terrains.23 Rachel Trickett (LMH 1942) was elected to a fellowship in English at St. Hugh’s in 1955 after spending eight years at University College in Hull. She wrote six novels and one scholarly study of the Augustan poets (The Honest Muse, 1967). When she first came to St. Hugh’s, the principal, Miss Proctor, looked over her list of publications and, remarking on her fiction, said, “Now Miss Trickett; no more of these lower forms.”24 From 1973 to 1991, she served as principal of St. Hugh’s and presided over a period when the college first accepted men as fellows (1978) and then as undergraduates (1986). Though Miss Trickett did not favor mixed colleges, she was not obstructive when the change came and proved valuable in helping old members of the college accept the transformation.

St. Anne’s At St. Anne’s, three gifted English tutors established one of the best English schools at Oxford and inspired many well-known women writers, journalists, and academics. Christine Morrison, always called Kirstie (Oxford Home-Students 1923), began teaching Home-Students in 1930 and did not retire until 1970, at which point she still remained a mentor for many of her former pupils. Elaine Griffiths (Oxford Home-Students 1928), a favorite pupil of J.R.R. Tolkien, became tutor of the Society in 1938 and served for more than forty years. Dorothy Bednarowska (Oxford Home-Students 1933) was appointed a lecturer for St. Anne’s in 1946 and became a fellow and university lecturer in 1954, retiring in 1982. These three women were all exceptional teachers and devoted their whole energies to students. An obituary of Dorothy Bednarowska noted that “all her best thoughts and insights were shared and discussed with her pupils rather than saved for a learned journal,” and the comment could apply equally well to her two colleagues.25 Marjorie Reeves (St. Hugh’s 1923) came

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to the Home-Students in 1938 as history tutor, later becoming a fellow, and retired in 1974. She achieved distinction as one of the foremost authorities on Joachim of Fiore, a twelfth-century Italian abbot who has been described as “the first systematic thinker about the nature and meaning of history. . . . He was our first futurologist, even if not our first Utopianist.”26 Dr. Reeves was also an important educator who wrote on the philosophy of education and created a series of history textbooks for children that were innovative and imaginative. One pupil recalled that Dr. Reeves was such an inspiring history teacher that she left tutorials “feeling capable of anything.”27 Marjorie Reeves was a fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. In 1948, Iris Murdoch (Somerville 1938) got a tutorship in philosophy at St. Anne’s and remained there for fifteen years. She was remembered as a stimulating teacher and an unconventional personality. She often wore trousers and sandals with socks—unusual attire for those days—and frequently conducted tutorials while sitting crosslegged on the floor. Iris Murdoch resigned her fellowship in 1963. She had already published seven novels but felt she needed more time to concentrate on her writing.28 She would go on to publish nineteen more novels, as well as plays, philosophical works, criticism, and poetry, and would establish herself as one of the most inventive and influential writers of the twentieth century. She was appointed DBE in 1987. Peter Ady (LMH 1941), the economics tutor who was noted both for her elegant wardrobe and exciting tutorials; Annie Barnes, a dynamic and demanding French tutor, whose work on seventeenth-century French writers brought her international renown; and Jenifer Hart (Somerville 1932), tutor in history and politics—all contributed to an image of St. Anne’s as an “unstuffy, liberal and generally go-ahead” institution.29 Jenifer Hart, who wrote that description, was herself a charismatic personality who believed that “aristocracy of the intellect could sit alongside a genuine

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social egalitarianism.”30 She came to St. Anne’s from the civil service in 1947, after her husband became a philosophy don at New College, and she remained there for almost thirty years. Hart considered Lady Ogilvie responsible in large part for St. Anne’s enhanced reputation. To her mind, the principal “exuded warmth, friendliness, support, praise, encouragement” and “fostered in the college a great and valuable sense of community.”31

St. Hilda’s At St. Hilda’s, Dorothy Whitelock (see Chapter 13), Helen Gardner, and Beryl Smalley set high standards of academic achievement. Helen Gardner (St. Hilda’s 1926) came as tutor in English literature to her former college in 1941, becoming a fellow the following year. She earned a reputation as a world-famous scholar and critic who made lasting contributions to literary studies. To many students, she was a daunting presence who did not mince words if she thought their work was slipshod. Ann Thwaite (St. Hilda’s 1952) recalled a tutorial in which Miss Gardner heaped scorn on her essay because she had based her arguments on other people’s opinions. Thwaite went on to say she never made that mistake again but was grateful to her tutor for teaching her “how to study, how to think, how to gut books.”32 In 1954, Helen Gardner was elected to a new readership in Renaissance literature at Oxford and in 1966 became the first woman to hold the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature. In recognition of her distinguished career, she received honorary doctorates from many universities (including Oxford), was elected fellow of both the British Academy (1958) and the Royal Society of Literature (1962), and was appointed DBE in 1967. Beryl Smalley (St. Hilda’s 1924), pioneering historian of the study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, became a fellow of St. Hilda’s in 1944 after research work at Girton and a temporary job at the Bodleian. She was an exacting but inspiring tutor who

took her teaching commitments seriously. She once refused a student’s request to write “a really modern history paper” on the grounds that writing about history after 1914 was “mere journalism.”33 Her own scholarship, illustrated in her books and articles, was exemplary. Discussing Beryl Smalley’s work in Medieval Scholarship, Henrietta Leyser wrote: “It is a measure of her achievement that by the time of her death, on 6 April 1984, it had become impossible to imagine a Middle Ages without the study of its Bible.”34 To this formidable trio came Menna Prestwich (LMH 1935) and Dr. Muriel Tomlinson (St. Hilda’s 1928) in 1947. Mrs. Prestwich, a historian of seventeenthcentury England and France, was married to John Prestwich, medieval historian and fellow at Queen’s College, and they formed a distinguished partnership in teaching and research. She was known as a rigorous and provocative tutor; Eleanor Wooller (St. Hilda’s 1949) said that a tutorial with her was “like being connected to a live electric cable.”35 Dora Thornton (St. Hilda’s 1981) compared Menna Prestwich to “a terrier given a piece of information, taking it by the neck and shaking it until its bogus quality could be exposed or hard clear truth revealed to be admired from every angle.”36 She was fellow of the college from 1947 to 1983. Dr. Muriel Tomlinson (St. Hilda’s 1928), tutor and fellow between 1947 and 1975 and university lecturer in organic chemistry from 1948, was another woman not afraid to speak her mind; she stimulated a long succession of research scientists at Oxford. She was an authority on organic nitrogen compounds and became the first woman organic chemist to be awarded a DSc from Oxford.

Married Dons All the Oxford women’s colleges found ways, through various means, to add to their teaching strength, and they did not sacrifice quality for quantity. As noted here, they attracted a number of eminent women—

women who were making names for themselves in literature, philosophy, history, education, science, and medicine. There was, of course, nothing new in the fact that distinguished scholars could be found at the Oxford women’s colleges. In the 1950s and 1960s, however, an increasing number of these scholars were married, some with children, and that trend constituted a significant break with tradition. Since their founding, the Oxford women’s colleges had largely been staffed by unmarried women, and if a woman tutor married while in office, she almost always resigned. The colleges considered it desirable to have resident women tutors whose primary allegiance was to the college and to their pupils. In the 1930s, the situation began to change. According to Pauline Adams, Somerville took the unprecedented step for an Oxford women’s college of electing tutor Isobel Munro to a fellowship even though she was engaged to be married.37 The prejudice against married tutors lifted even more after the war, and by 1960, almost half of Somerville’s tutors and fellows were married. As Pauline Adams noted, it would have been difficult, with Janet Vaughan (wife and mother) as principal, “to maintain traditional doubts about the compatibility of family and college responsibilities.”38 Lady Ogilvie at St. Anne’s, who also had no qualms about having married women on her staff, made life easier for her younger dons when in 1963 she started the first nursery on college grounds for fellows’ children. She always promoted the idea at St. Anne’s that the goal of female education was to train women “to lead increasingly complex lives, encompassing homemaking, gainful employment and community service.”39 Two married fellows were on the LMH staff just before the war, but by 1961, there were six married women among the eighteen members of the governing body, although two marriages had ended by that time. St. Hilda’s had two married lecturers and one married fellow in 1945, but when Mrs. Menna Prestwich was being considered for a fellowship in 1947,

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the appointing committee still expressed reservations about electing a nonresident fellow. According to Margaret E. Rayner: “The emphasis on residence was probably based on the traditional view that St. Hilda’s was a community (if not a family) in which activities—other than academic ones—were shared throughout the term; pastoral care for undergraduates was a substantial part of a tutor’s duties.”40 The college did approve Mrs. Prestwich in the end but elected only one other married woman to a fellowship between 1947 and 1960. The increased number of married women dons at Oxford was accompanied, not surprisingly, by an increased number of academic women with children. In 1938, Dorothy Hodgkin became the first serving fellow at any of the women’s colleges to give birth. Helen Darbishire and the Somerville Council took the enlightened step, for that period, of providing Dorothy with paid maternity leave. In 1944, when Dorothy was expecting her third child and another fellow was expecting her first, the college decided to allow three months’ paid leave for any tutorial or administrative staff member who was having a baby. (The university developed no policy on maternity leave for its women academics until 1971.)41 Although more women dons were having children, no one matched Elizabeth Anscombe’s total of seven. Mary Warnock, a student when she first encountered Anscombe and her offspring, found the experience distressing. Mary had come back to LMH in 1946 to resume her war-interrupted work and began meeting with Elizabeth Anscombe, a research fellow at Somerville, on a regular basis to discuss philosophy. Sometimes they met at Anscombe’s home, and Mary always dreaded these occasions because Elizabeth Anscombe lived in complete indifference to most people’s standard of cleanliness. The house reeked of cigarette smoke and dirty diapers. Mary once had a baby thrust into her arms when she arrived so that its mother could finish a piece of writing, and she was horrified. “I knew absolutely nothing of babies. All I knew was that this damp and

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malodorous object was something the like of which I never wanted to see again.”42 Mary Warnock would eventually have five children and enjoy living, in her own words, among “seas of squalor, children and noise.”43 She and Susan Wood did not feel that colleagues at St. Hugh’s approved of their having children, and Susan admitted that she had to steel herself to appear in the SCR while pregnant.44 Both found, however, that the St. Hugh’s dons always politely inquired after their children, just “as they asked each other about the pets; cats, dogs and tortoises, which they themselves kept, and which formed much of the conversational material in this claustrophobic society.”45 As more married, nonresident tutors and fellows came onto the staffs of the Oxford women’s colleges after the war, there was an inevitable erosion of what Pauline Adams called “the traditional model of the college as a residential community of scholars.”46 Older members may have regretted that the college was no longer the primary focus of

attention for many tutors and fellows, but the change had benefits. The senior common rooms began to lose their reputation as havens for unsophisticated spinsters who had little interest in or knowledge of the world at large. They also became more representative of the society into which the junior members would go after graduation. Marriage rates for Oxford women graduates rose sharply after the First World War. Before 1914, 30 percent of Oxford women married after college, but that figure climbed to 71 percent in the 1930s and to 84 percent in the 1950s.47 Oxford women who married after college in the 1950s and 1960s were also more likely to combine marriage with careers, when employers would permit it (a marriage bar still operated in some professions), and to raise families, even if they had to take a career break to do so. Given that situation, women like Janet Vaughan, Mary Warnock, and others mentioned here were positive role models for young women students, proving that marriage was not incompatible with high academic or professional achievement.

Appendix 6

Building Programs of the 1950s and 1960s

All the Oxford women’s colleges underwent major physical changes in the 1950s and, in particular, the 1960s, largely to accommodate increased numbers of applicants. The Oxford women principals and their governing bodies knew that, with the abolition of the quota system, more women would come to study at Oxford, and the Robbins Report of 1963 only intensified the situation. Lionel Robbins, a distinguished economist, chaired a committee that produced the first major postwar report on higher education. At the time the report was published, only 4–5 percent of the relevant age group attended university, and the committee urged a major expansion of university education so that all those who had the ability and desire to pursue higher learning should have the opportunity to do so. Thereafter, the government increasingly stressed university expansion, and the Oxford women’s colleges felt compelled to take up the challenge to increase their undergraduate totals, which by implication meant that they needed more facilities to house them. What follows is a brief description of how each of the women’s colleges met the pressure to expand.

available, the college would be ready to respond. Somerville hired an architect in 1948 to come up with detailed drawings for a residential block and rough plans for a library extension and staff hall. With the offer of a loan from the university and the sale of Somerville’s sports field in nearby Cutteslowe, the college was able, in 1950, to begin construction of a building that would house eight undergraduates. An unexpected bequest of £7,000 from Mary Cassels Ross (Somerville 1896), specifically designated for the library, and a promised loan of £5,000 from the university propelled the college to appeal to old members and friends for additional money to expand the library, with a ground floor stack room for twenty-five thousand volumes and ten undergraduate rooms above. The appeal coincided with the celebration in June 1954 of Somerville’s seventy-fifth anniversary, and the library extension was completed in 1956. Attracting able graduate students was one of Janet Vaughan’s major interests, but Somerville could not offer them live-in accommodation when she took office. After visiting a sick graduate student from Nepal in her substandard lodgings, the principal made it her goal to provide comfortable housing in college for students pursuing graduate studies. A further appeal to old students and friends for a graduate house went out in 1959, but funds were insufficient to begin building until the principal approached Lord Nuffield, who agreed to contribute £45,000 in memory of his wife, Elizabeth.1 The graduate building, completed in 1964, was one of the first in

Somerville At Somerville, Janet Vaughan lost little time after becoming principal in planning additions to and improvements for the college, despite limited funds. She strongly believed in identifying Somerville’s needs and drawing up plans to meet those needs so that, if and when money became

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Oxford specifically for graduate students; the first twenty-four occupants represented fourteen nations. Given its international makeup, the new building, called the Margery Fry and Elizabeth Nuffield House, was appropriately opened by the Honorable Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, president of the United Nations, on October 15, 1964. When the college began building the graduate house in 1962, it also laid the foundation for an undergraduate block nearby that would house forty-eight students and two tutors. There was no money to proceed further at that time, but the Robbins Report of 1963 brought about some rapid changes. The University Grants Committee contacted all universities to determine by how much they could increase the number of their students, and it showed particular interest in what Oxford and Cambridge could do to offer more places to women.2 In response, Somerville instructed an architect to modify the drawings so that the proposed undergraduate residence could be enlarged to accommodate sixty students. With plans in place, Somerville obtained a grant from the UGC, and the new residential block was completed in the spring of 1966. Somerville named it Vaughan in honor of the principal who seized on every opportunity to improve and enlarge her college. In 1964, Dr. Vaughan learned of a £100,000 offer from the Isaac Wolfson Foundation for a residence hall, and the college acted quickly in choosing an architect to draw up plans for such a building. Sir Isaac, a successful businessman from Glasgow, and his wife were committed philanthropists, particularly in the fields of health and education. Janet Vaughan did not remain as principal in time to see the Wolfson Building opened on November 2, 1967, for she had handed over the leadership to Barbara Craig (Somerville 1934) the month before. By the time Dr. Vaughan retired, Somerville’s numbers had increased to 270 undergraduates and nearly 100 graduates (compared to 160 undergraduates and approximately 76 graduates in 1945–1946), and the college had doubled in size since 1957.3

Lady Margaret Hall When Lucy Sutherland came to Lady Margaret Hall in 1945, she knew that the old library needed to be replaced. It was too small to house the books that the college possessed, many of which were stored elsewhere, and to accommodate the number of people who wanted to work in it. A lengthy planning process ensued, and the college had reason to believe that the UGC would contribute to the cost of a new library. When the UGC unexpectedly declined to grant the money, Miss Sutherland refused “to take ‘no’ for an answer, or for the answer.”4 The college announced its decision in March 1956 to build a new library, even though members of the governing body did not know where the estimated £80,000 construction cost would come from. Miss Sutherland set to work on fund-raising appeals, and, with a £20,000 loan at a low interest rate from the university, the new library became a reality in the spring of 1961. The workers were not quite finished in March of that year when books had to be transferred to the new library from the old, which was shortly to undergo renovations. The removal process, which took more than twenty days, could only begin after 6:00 pm because the men who came in to do the job worked for the proctors during the day. Even though the workers broke at 7:15 pm each evening for a pint in a nearby pub, they managed to transport thirty-five thousand volumes through the chaos of a building site without mishap.5 On May 28, 1961, LMH held an open day for senior members of the university to tour the new library, named after Lynda Grier. The visitors found an attractive interior marked by individual bays, each with windows, where readers could work in comfort and privacy. One sad note was that Irene Churchill (LMH 1907), a librarian, archivist, and ecclesiastical historian of distinction over her long career, died in March 1961 before the new library was completed. She had long been a benefactor to the college, particularly its library, and continued to be so after her death. She not

only willed half her estate to Lady Margaret Hall but also enriched the new library with her valuable collection of books, many of which were very rare. 6 Other conversions went on at LMH in the early 1960s. The college turned the old library block into extra rooms and a common room in 1961 and 1962, remodeled the kitchens at the same time, and upgraded the heating system in Deneke Building. In 1963, the Wolfson Foundation gave £100,000 to the college for student accommodation, and two new buildings— Wolfson West and Wolfson North—went up between 1965 and 1966. Each could house about twenty undergraduates. These two additions, along with the new library, transformed a scattered group of buildings into a quadrangle that resembled those of Oxford’s more ancient foundations, with a green lawn in the center and a dignified entrance onto Norham Gardens Road, complete with porter’s lodge. The college had grown from 205 undergraduates and 50 postgraduate students in 1961 to 296 undergraduates and 82 post-graduate students in 1969.

St. Hugh’s In 1946, Evelyn Proctor became principal of St. Hugh’s, a college that was just recovering from the disruption of being requisitioned for war purposes and that badly needed, in common with the other women’s societies, more housing for students. A beginning was made in 1951, when Joan Evans, a distinguished St. Hugh’s graduate, made it possible for the college to purchase the titles to a number of nearby houses.7 Many of the properties still had lessees, but the purchase brought into St. Hugh’s possession almost all the fourteen acres of its so-called island site, which was bounded by the Banbury and Woodstock Roads to the east and west, respectively, Canterbury Road to the south, and St. Margaret’s Road to the north. In 1955, the college launched a building appeal for £20,000 to extend a residential wing to house more students and to enlarge the dining hall. The University Grants Committee contributed £5,000 for the

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dining hall, but two-thirds of the money needed to build came from old students and friends who generously responded to the appeal. The extensions were completed in 1958, and all St. Hugh’s students, even those living in houses, could gather in one place for meals. The most comprehensive building projects belonged, however, to the 1960s; they were directed by Kathleen Kenyon (Somerville 1925), who succeeded Miss Proctor as principal in 1962. Plans for an undergraduate residential block were approved in 1964, and fund-raising began, with the college again appealing to old members and friends, as well as to outside bodies. The new building, to be called the Kenyon Building, was ready for use in January 1966. In March 1965, the Wolfson Foundation announced a grant of £100,000 for another residential block, which would add forty-four undergraduate rooms and three staff suites. Three old houses on St. Margaret’s Road were torn down to make way for the Wolfson Building, and Vera Daniel, tutor in French, organized a demolition party for the one in which she lived. Fortified with bottles of gin, the guests were divided into teams, and they set off to rip up floorboards and knock down walls. Miss Kenyon arrived with her excavating tools from archaeological digs, chopped the banister into pieces, and “threw them through the skylight like darts” (189). Wolfson was completed in 1967, and served as the connecting link between the library block and the Kenyon Building. With Kenyon and Wolfson, St. Hugh’s could now accommodate 244 undergraduates and provide rooms in college for all who wished to live in. During the 1960s, St. Hugh’s also expanded the library and built a buttery, where students and staff could buy food and drink. The buttery was particularly welcome, “the first room in College where members of the SCR and JCR can meet informally at meal-times, and where non-members of St. Hugh’s can be entertained”—and the food was good (188). The college also retook possession of a house at 72 Woodstock Road, which it acquired in 1943 but had rented out for a number of years. St. Hugh’s converted the house into the principal’s lodgings in

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1963, and it was proudly described as “far more spacious than the Principal’s Lodgings at any other women’s college, and comparing favourably even with those of most men’s colleges” (188). The college had taken on the appearance of a construction site during most of the 1960s but, in ten years, increased its numbers from the 214 total of 1960–61 to 371 in 1969 (290 undergraduates and 81 postgraduates).8

St. Anne’s In 1952, Eleanor Plumer was ready to retire from St. Anne’s, having seen her society achieve collegiate status. Before stepping down, however, she entered into one more important negotiation. Accommodation for students was still a concern, and Miss Plumer turned her eye toward houses just behind Hartland House on the south side of Bevington Road, which were all owned by St. John’s College. When St. John’s proved willing to sell the entire property at a generous price to St. Anne’s, the offer was quickly accepted. In honor of Miss Plumer’s vision and her impending retirement, past and present students and outside friends opened a Plumer Fund to help pay for the property. This group contributed so generously to the fund that almost all the money needed for the purchase price was raised, and no public appeal had to be launched. Miss Plumer did not delay her retirement long enough to see the purchase completed in 1954. Lady Mary Ogilvie was elected to replace her in 1953 and came on board in time to hand over a check to St. John’s for the Bevington Road houses and for an additional piece of property on the Woodstock Road. Tenants resided in all but one of the houses, but as their leases expired over the next few years, the college took over the houses and converted them for student use. St. Anne’s was becoming a residential college, but, according to Marjorie Reeves, it lacked that “important symbol of collegiate life, the ‘common table.’ Students still ate in a dozen or more separate houses, with separate cooks and kitchens. Economy as well as tradition argued for one

dining-hall.”9 Lady Ogilvie wanted traditions for St. Anne’s, but could the college afford to be economical if it meant laying out a good deal of money to finance a communal dining hall? In a fortunate piece of timing, the UGC stepped in to offer St. Anne’s a grant that initially amounted to around £50,000, through the university, for building a dining hall in 1955.10 Construction began in 1956. In the fall of 1959, St. Anne’s dining hall was ready for use. The Times described the new hall, built on the Woodstock Road side of St. Anne’s, as “frankly modernist.”11 Glass formed two walls, and an abstract mural in brilliant colors decorated the outside of a curved eastern wall. The interior ceiling was constructed out of sound-deadening material in order to reduce the sound of women’s voices. The dining hall was an important addition to St. Anne’s developing corporate life, but students who were used to the convenience of dining in their own hostels found that eating communally required some sacrifices. Judith Vidal Hall remembered: “It was a shock to be thrust out in the cold to cross wet lawns for a cup of coffee. Many a breakfast went uneaten and even the smell of burned toast that . . . no longer wafted up the stairs to meet us, was remembered fondly.” Hall acknowledged, however, that the hall “did begin to weld us into a collegiate entity and break down the segregation imposed by the houses.”12 By 1960, all undergraduates at St. Anne’s lived in college houses or hostels within an easy distance from the dining hall, and the college could now be called a fully residential institution. Lady Ogilvie looked beyond 1960, however, and took advantage of continued UGC largesse between 1958 and 1962 to acquire houses along the Woodstock and Banbury Roads and to convert the Bevington Road houses for student and staff residence. She also secured a grant of £80,000 from the Wolfson Foundation for St. Anne’s first building designed specifically for undergraduate residence, which opened in 1964 on the Banbury Road side of the college. By 1968, all the Oxford women’s colleges had a building funded by Isaac Wolfson, but Lady Ogilvie, herself a Scot, found him first.

The building program did not stop there, however. Lady Ogilvie found another generous benefactor in 1964 when the Rayne Foundation agreed to give £100,000 for an undergraduate residence that would house approximately forty-five students.13 The Rayne Building, which went up beside Wolfson on the Banbury Road side of the college and looked like its twin, was formally opened in 1968, by which time Lady Ogilvie had retired. Nancy Trenaman (Somerville 1938), who took over the principal’s job in 1966 after a distinguished civil service career, had the pleasure of welcoming the first undergraduates to Rayne. By 1969, St. Anne’s could house 316 undergraduates and 78 postgraduates in its interesting combination of modern residential blocks and Victorian houses. The transformation had been dramatic, from a society with the humble name of HomeStudents and almost no corporate life to an incorporated college with a dignified title and collegiate buildings excellently situated on valuable property near the center of Oxford.

St. Hilda’s After the quota was raised in 1948 and again in the early 1950s, St. Hilda’s could house only about 115 students in college and 35 more in its two hostels, a total considerably lower than the 190 it was permitted to accept. On September 26, 1952, St. Hilda’s launched an appeal to the public and old students for £150,000 to begin a building program. Those who supported the appeal maintained that “St. Hilda’s has only a very small free endowment, and, in an era of rising costs, cannot hope to finance extensive building by loans to be repaid out of income. It requires a substantial capital sum in order to embark with confidence on a necessary policy of expansion.”14 The college also negotiated loans from the university and sought private donors. In the early 1950s, Stephanie Robinson (Somerville 1935), St. Hilda’s treasurer, thumbing through a volume of Who’s Who, came upon the name of Miriam Sacher and wrote for an interview. Mrs. Sacher, the

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daughter of one of the founders of Marks and Spencer, a successful British chain store, was married to Harry Sacher, lawyer, writer, and fervent Zionist. The Sachers gave generously to the Zionist movement and also extended their philanthropy to education, child welfare, and medical research. Mrs. Sacher proved willing to offer financial aid to St. Hilda’s, and she and her two sisters provided a new wing of undergraduate rooms over the kitchen. Mrs. Sacher contributed to St. Hilda’s on subsequent occasions, and a familial link was established when her granddaughter entered St. Hilda’s in 1967 to read history.15 For years, the gardens between Hall and South had been separated by the Milham Ford Building, which was owned by the City of Oxford. The building had been used as a school for children and, during the war, as an air-raid post. Since 1945, it had housed the Architecture Department of the College of Technology, Art, and Commerce. The city had offered to sell Milham Ford to St. Hilda’s in the 1930s, but the two sides could not come to an agreement. When the Architecture Department moved in 1958, the city again offered the property to the college, and with the aid of UGC grants, the purchase was completed. The UGC, which paid the city £14,000 for the title (and provided an additional £33,000 for renovations), gave Milham Ford to the university. In turn, the university leased the building to St. Hilda’s for 999 years at an insignificant rent. Milham Ford was converted into a residence for undergraduates and fellows, and a new driveway into the college and a porter’s lodge were created to unify the three buildings. In 1960, the Wolfson Foundation gave £100,000 to St. Hilda’s for an undergraduate block; Princess Margaret formally opened the new building on June 26, 1964. After the Robbins Report of 1963, St. Hilda’s was receptive to the idea of increasing its size by 25 percent and began planning another undergraduate residence in 1967 “to be paid for by a vigorous appeal, existing resources and an overdraft at the bank.”16 The college opened its Appeal for the Garden Building

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in the fall of 1968 and, by early 1970, had collected more than £141,000. Mrs. Sacher, who had given money for one whole floor of the building, laid the foundation stone on June 10, 1969, and Garden Building opened to undergraduates in Michaelmas term 1970. Kathleen Major, who became principal in 1955, reaped the benefit from one of the building schemes initiated during Miss Mann’s tenure. For twenty-seven years, Miss Mann had lived in only two college rooms, with no private bathroom or kitchen, but in the expansion program that began in 1952, a principal’s house was constructed on the grounds of the college. When Miss Major was elected to lead St. Hilda’s, she became the first principal to live in it. Ironically, the college did not anticipate the possibility of married principals and designed the house only for a single woman and a resident housekeeper. When Mrs. Mary Moore took up the principal’s job in 1980, the lodging had to be extensively enlarged before she, her husband, and their young son moved in.17 St. Hilda’s had grown considerably in the twenty-four years since the end of World War II. The college began the 1945–1946 academic year with 150 undergraduates and 15 other students involved in postgraduate work. In Michaelmas term 1969, there were 265 undergraduates in residence and 61 postgraduate students.

The 1960s: A Decade of Expansion The Oxford women’s colleges bravely shouldered the burden of expansion after the quota was abolished in 1957 and the Robbins Report became public in 1963. The principals and their governing bodies seized every opportunity to increase their undergraduate capacity, and they hardly found time to enjoy one new building before beginning construction on another. With little capital on which to draw, the scramble for funds to pay for these projects was, however, never ending. They repeatedly called on old members and friends for help, and, although these groups responded with great generosity, their purses were not

deep enough to cover the scale of building that was needed. Without loans from the university, grants from the UGC, and gifts from outside benefactors, the women’s colleges would never have been able to grow in the manner described. In addition to encouraging the women’s colleges to expand in the 1960s, the university became more responsive to their overall financial needs. Oxford initiated a scheme in the early 1960s whereby the richer colleges, by means of a levy, would contribute to a common fund, from which the university could give general endowment grants to the colleges who required it most. The women’s colleges, and some of the poorer men’s foundations, derived considerable benefit from this plan over a number of years. Nuffield College also earned the women’s gratitude in 1964 by a £10,000 gift to each of the five colleges for general educational purposes, and Jesus College followed shortly with a gift of £5,000, to be distributed equally among them. The women’s colleges particularly welcomed the financial support that came in the 1960s, for it appeared at a time of considerable expenditure. Janet Howarth said, however, that the university was not just interested in easing the money worries that plagued all the women principals but “was motivated by a desire to maintain Oxford as a community of autonomous colleges whose survival was in no case over-dependent on state funding. But it brought for the first time to the Oxford women’s societies endowments of their own that were not immediately swallowed up by building.”18 At the time the quota was abolished in January 1957, the university allowed just slightly more than 1,000 women to be in residence at the five women’s colleges (no more than 200 each at LMH, Somerville, St. Hugh’s, and St. Hilda’s and 230 at St. Anne’s). By the time the decade of expansion ended in 1970, the number of women undergraduates at Oxford had climbed to 1,474 for the 1969–1970 academic year, a 43 percent increase from 1957.



Notes

I have identified works and archives frequently cited in the notes by the following abbreviations: Centenary History HUO LMHA LMHL SAA SACL SCA SHiA SHA

Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford (London: Lindsay Ross Publishing, 1993). Brian Harrison, ed., The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Lady Margaret Hall Archives, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford Lady Margaret Hall Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford St. Anne’s Archives, St. Anne’s College, Oxford St. Anne’s College Library, St. Anne’s College, Oxford Somerville College Archives, Somerville College, Oxford St. Hilda’s Archives, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford St. Hugh’s Archives, St. Hugh’s College, Oxford

Preface 1. Harold Macmillan, “Oxford Remembered,” Times (London), October 18, 1975. 2. Vera Brittain, The Women at Oxford, 16.

Chapter 1 1. Joseph A. Banks and Olive Banks, Feminism and Family Planning in Victorian England, 28. According to the authors, lower-class boys may have been more likely to die young than boys from the middle and upper classes. 2. Jane Austen, Emma, 18–19. 3. Pamela Horn, “The Victorian Governess,” History of Education 18 (1989): 335. 4. In nineteenth-century England, elementary schools were only for the working classes and could include children as old as fourteen. Secondary

schools could include children from seven to twenty and were provided only for the middle classes. Higher education generally referred to university-level work. See Gillian Sutherland, “The Movement for the Higher Education of Women,” 94. 5. Quoted in June Purvis, A History of Women’s Education in England, 108. 6. Quoted in Elaine Kaye, A History of Queen’s College, London, 1848–1972, 39. 7. Cheltenham catered to a select clientele; daughters of tradesmen were refused admittance. The North London Collegiate School had no policy of social exclusiveness; if parents could pay the fees, their daughters were admitted. Beale disliked the idea of competition, and she initially refused to allow her pupils to participate in organized games or in public examinations when they were opened to girls, although she eventually changed her position on both counts. Buss

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8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 6. 1 17.

18. 9. 1 20.

Notes to Pages 5–18 was a great believer in physical exercise and wholeheartedly encouraged her girls to participate in public examinations and to pursue higher education whenever any opportunity presented itself. The two women were the subjects of an anonymous rhyme that had wide circulation in their lifetimes: “Miss Buss and Miss Beale / Cupid’s darts do not feel; / How different from us, / Miss Beale and Miss Buss!” Buss apparently found the rhyme amusing; Beale did not. Emily Davies (1830–1921) became one of the leading activists for women’s causes in the mid– to late nineteenth century after moving to London on the death of her father in 1861. She was involved with a group of women who helped found the feminist Englishwoman’s Journal in 1858 and the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women in 1860. She also worked hard in support of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who campaigned unsuccessfully to be the first woman to attend medical school in England but who, after obtaining an M.D. degree from the University of Paris in 1870, practiced medicine in Britain and was the first woman member of the British Medical Association. Quoted in Barbara Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 88–89. Quoted in Purvis, History of Women’s Education in England, 74. Quoted in Vera Brittain, The Women at Oxford, 34. Quoted in Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 139. Quoted in Barry Turner, Equality for Some, 107. Quoted in Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, 251. Brittain, Women at Oxford, 31–32. Quoted in Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 146–47. A fellow is an elected member of the governing board of an incorporated college who normally undertakes teaching and/or research duties. Fellows and their head constitute a college. Quoted in Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 194. Ibid., 229. Quoted in Kamm, Hope Deferred, 258.

1. Ibid., 259. 2 22. Margaret Bryant, The Unexpected Revolution. 23. Ibid., 60.

Chapter 2 1. Letter from Charlotte Green to Miss Rogers, August 26, 1873, St. Anne’s College Archives (hereafter, SAA). Charlotte Green, sister of the writer John Addington Symonds, began her Oxford life in 1871 when she married T. H. Green, fellow of Balliol. She acted as joint secretary for the Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford when it was organized in 1878 but resigned on her husband’s premature death in 1882. She then went to London for nurses’ training and came back to Oxford as a district nurse. Mrs. Green resumed her work for women’s education in Oxford and took her husband’s place on the Somerville Council in 1884, serving until her death in 1929. She also joined the first committee for Home-Students in 1893 and retained her seat until 1921. Outside the university, Mrs. Green led an active life as a member of the Education Committee of the Oxford City Council and as a member of the Committee of Management at the Radcliffe Infirmary. 2. William Wordsworth, “Written in London, September, 1802,” The Poetical Works of Wordsworth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982). 3. Matriculation is the ceremony by which a student formally becomes a member of the university. A student first has to be accepted for admittance to a college before being presented for matriculation. The ceremony dates from a 1420 royal statute that required every new student to appear personally before the chancellor and swear to keep the university statutes and the peace. 4. Quoted in Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 25. 5. John Sutherland, Mrs. Humphry Ward, 57. 6. T. H. Green (1836–1882), the first fellow of Balliol not to take holy orders, was appointed Whyte Professor of Moral

Philosophy in 1878. He profoundly influenced philosophical and religious thought in late nineteenth-century Oxford and became a potent force in local civic politics. While at the height of his intellectual powers, he died in March 1882. Mandell Creighton (1843–1901), elected to a fellowship at Merton in 1866, became one of the most influential dons in the university. In 1875, he left Oxford to become vicar of a large rural parish in Northumberland, where he had the leisure to pursue scholarly work in ecclesiastical history. His research and writing in this area led to his appointment as the first Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge in 1884. Creighton became bishop of Peterborough in 1891 and then bishop of London in 1897. He was only fifty-seven when he died in 1901. John Wordsworth (1843–1911) was elected to a fellowship at Brasenose in 1867 and then became the Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture in 1883. In 1885, he was appointed bishop of Salisbury and died in office. Wordsworth began work on a critical edition of the Vulgate text of the New Testament in 1878, and he is regarded as a distinguished historical theologian. 7. Brittain, Women at Oxford, 39. 8. In 1800, a statute introduced an honours classification for examinations, more exacting and representing higher standards of study than the ordinary pass examinations, that allowed examiners to recognize candidates of exceptional merit. In 1807, a system of classes was instituted for the honours examinations, and by 1830, four classes were recognized. A first went to those “worthy of some eminent commendation” and a second to those who showed “laudable progress.” Candidates receiving third- and fourthclass honours were able to satisfy the examiners but not with any particular distinction. (The second class was divided into two parts in 1986, and the fourth class was abolished after 1967.) The list of recipients in each class was published in alphabetical order. 9. The responsions exam (colloquially known as “smalls”) wasn’t opened

Notes to Pages 19–29

10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 7. 1 18.

9. 1 20. 21. 2. 2 23.

24. 5. 2 26. 7. 2 28. 29.

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to women until 1886. It was the first examination that Oxford men had to pass before they could embark on a degree course, and most men took it in their second year. They were examined in Greek and Latin, and elementary mathematics. In 1850 responsions was downgraded when a new examination was instituted that fell between responsions and final examinations. The new examination was called the first public examination or, in some schools, moderations (usually abbreviated to “mods”). Responsions went through other changes and was finally abolished in 1960. Gemma Bailey, ed., A Short History of Lady Margaret Hall, 1879–1923, 20. H. E. Salter and Mary D. Lobel, eds., The Victoria History of the County of Oxford, 3:341. Ruth F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 1:1. The Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford Report, October 1885–October 1886, SAA. Quoted in Marjorie Reeves, St. Anne’s College, 9. Quoted in Georgina Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 66. Bailey, Lady Margaret Hall, 22. Ibid., 39 Edith Pearson, “A First Chapter at Lady Margaret Hall,” Brown Book, 1909, 47. Lady Margaret Hall Library (hereafter LMHL). Tanis Hinchcliffe, North Oxford, 154–55. Annie M.A.H. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 157. Quoted in Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 75 Ibid. Marina Warner, “Sisters of the Discreet Revolution,” The Guardian, June 27, 1978. Butler, St. Anne’s College, 1:30. Quoted in Reeves, St. Anne’s, 2. Reminiscences of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Johnson, SAA. Butler, St. Anne’s College, 1:110. Quoted in Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 84. Quoted in Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 16.

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Notes to Pages 30–47

30. “Greats” is the popular name for literae humaniores, the final honour school, for which candidates study Greek and Latin classics, philosophy, and ancient history. Before embarking on greats, candidates must take the first public examination, which is termed classical honour moderations or “mods.” Honour moderations in both classics and mathematics were opened to women in 1884 and greats in 1888. 31. Elizabeth Wordsworth, Glimpses of the Past, 146. 32. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 30. 33. Elsa Richmond, ed., The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, 113. 34. Ibid., 115.

Chapter 3 1. Elizabeth M. Wright, “My Life in Oxford,” 77. 2. An Undergraduate, “A Day of His Life at Oxford,” 671, 677. 3. A Lady Undergraduate, “A Day of Her Life at Oxford,” 688. 4. Joseph Wells, ed., Oxford and Oxford Life, 89. 5. Quoted in Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 10. 6. Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 45. 7. Quoted in Tanis Hinchcliffe, North Oxford, 177. 8. Quoted in Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 17. 9. Elsa Richmond, ed., The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, 104. 10. Ibid., 114. 11. Quoted in Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 11. 12. Quoted in Janet Elizabeth Courtney, An Oxford Portrait Gallery, 244, 243. 13. Letter from E. F. Mathieson, The Ship, 23, St. Anne’s College Library (hereafter SACL). 14. Janet Elizabeth Courtney, Recollected in Tranquillity, 100–01. 15. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own was published in 1929. 16. Courtney, An Oxford Portrait Gallery, 54. 17. Quoted in Barbara Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 174.

18. Courtney, Recollected in Tranquillity, 95, 94–95. 19. Richmond, Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, 138. 20. Quoted in A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 64, 52, 87. 21. Quoted in Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 16. 22. Elizabeth M. Wright, The Life of Joseph Wright, 180. 23. Ibid., “My Life in Oxford,” 76. 24. Lilian Mary Faithfull, In the House of My Pilgrimage, 60. 25. Quoted in Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 70. 26. Quoted in Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 117. 27. Courtney, Recollected in Tranquillity, 101. 28. Brown Book, 25, LMHL. 29. Richmond, Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, 144. 30. Quoted in Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 59. 31. Quoted in F.M.G. Willson, A Strong Supporting Cast, 304. 32. Faithfull, House of My Pilgrimage, 66, 67.

Chapter 4 1. Edith Pearson, Brown Book, 1909, 48, LMHL. 2. In the 1880s, the Hebdomadal Council was the governing body of the university. It was made up of the chancellor, vice-chancellor, proctors, six heads of colleges, six professors, and six members of Convocation. It was replaced in 2000 by the University Council, which is the principal policy-making body of the university. Since the thirteenth century, proctors have performed disciplinary and administrative duties within the university. They are elected in rotation annually by members of the governing bodies of colleges. 3. Quoted in Annie M.A.H. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 15. Congregation is made up of resident masters of arts who are engaged in the academic and administrative work of the university. 4. The Hebdomadal Council had the power to initiate a statute, which always



5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 0. 1 11. 12.

13. 14. 5. 1 16. 17.

Notes to Pages 47–62 contained a preamble that briefly summarized the principles of the statute. The preamble was sent to Congregation for approval, and if it passed, another date would be set for Congregation to vote on the statute as a whole. If both the preamble and the statute were accepted, the measure would then go to Convocation, which had the final vote. “School” refers to a course of study (for example, the school of mathematics) prescribed for a bachelor of arts degree. “Schools” is also a popular name for final examinations, which are taken in the Examination Schools building that fronts the High Street. “University Intelligence,” Times (London), February 27, 1884. Convocation is the assembly of all masters of arts of the university, whether resident or not. In the past, one of its chief functions was to enact and repeal statutes, but its powers are now diminished. Now its primary function is to elect the chancellor (the honorific head of the university) and the professor of poetry. “Examinations of Women at Oxford,” Times (London), April 16, 1884. “University Intelligence,” Times (London), April 12, 1884. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 20–21. Letter to the Editor, Times (London), April 29, April 28, 1884. The Sheldonian Theatre, designed by Christopher Wren and completed in 1669, was constructed as a building for university functions and ceremonies. Wren commissioned an Oxford stonecutter to carve fourteen stone heads that sat on columns in front of the theatre. No one knows what the heads (now numbering thirteen) are supposed to represent. Philosophers, emperors, and wise men have all been offered as possibilities. Elizabeth Wordsworth, Glimpses of the Past, 169. Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 13. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 21–22. Wordsworth, Glimpses of the Past, 160. A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 61–62.

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8. Oxford Magazine, April 30, 1884, 187. 1 19. H. E. Salter and Mary D. Lobel, eds., The Victoria History of the County of Oxford, 3:51. 20. Quoted in Georgina Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 123. 21. Club Paper, 1901, St. Hugh’s Archives (hereafter, SHA). 22. Ibid., 1900, SHA. 23. St. Hugh’s Annual Report, 1913, SHA. 24. Quoted in Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 148. 25. For this discussion of the amalgamation crisis, I primarily relied on Betty Kemp, “The Early History of St. Hugh’s College,” in Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 18–22. 26. Quoted in Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 125. 27. Letter from Moberly to Mrs. Johnson, October 28, 1894, SAA. Charlotte Toynbee was the young widow of Arnold Toynbee, social reformer and political economist. She became treasurer at LMH in 1883 and served until 1920. 28. Quoted in Edith Olivier, Four Victorian Ladies of Wiltshire, 36.

Chapter 5 1. Lilian Mary Faithfull, In the House of My Pilgrimage, 64. 2. Ibid. 3. From the Somerville College Register, 1959. 4. From the Lady Margaret Hall Register, 1990. 5. These figures are reported in R. F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 1:120. 6. Fernanda Perrone, “Women Academics in England, 1870–1930,” 12:345. 7. Martha Vicinus, Independent Women, 221. 8. Janet Courtney, Recollected in Tranquillity, 248, 276. 9. Alice M. Gordon, “The After-Careers of University-Educated Women,” 113. 10. Georgina Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 102. 11. Janet Howarth and Mark Curthoys, “The Political Economy of Women’s Higher Education in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” 214.

342

Notes to Pages 62–81

12. Gordon, “After-Careers of UniversityEducated Women,” 113. 13. B. L. Hutchins, “Higher Education and Marriage,” 259–60. 14. Ibid., 264. 15. Ronald W. Clark, The Huxleys, 134. 16. Much of the information about Margaret Seward comes from Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women. 17. Quoted in Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 15. 18. Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? 204. 19. Emily Kemp, The Face of China, 212. 20. Helen Darbishire, Somerville College Chapel Addresses and Other Papers, 11. 21. The London School of Medicine for Women opened in 1874 and three years later, its founders persuaded the Royal Free Hospital to allow women students to obtain clinical training there. The arrangement proved a success; in 1898, the school became officially known as the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women. This information and Louisa Woodcock’s biographical details were supplied by Victoria Rea, archivist at the Royal Free Archive Centre, London. 22. Cornelia Sorabji, India Calling, 31. 23. Purdah refers to a screen or veil, and women kept in purdah are screened from the sight of men or strangers. High-caste Hindu women could own considerable property but, owing to their seclusion, had no access to the necessary legal expertise to defend it. 24. The biographical information about Irene Nichols comes from Elizabeth F. Matheson, Irene Nichols, 1862–1907, LMHL. 25. The biographical information about Maggie Benson comes primarily from A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, and Brian Masters, The Life of E. F. Benson. 26. Courtney, Recollected in Tranquillity, 104. 27. Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 129. 28. Sister Gertrude, Mother Edith O.M.S.E., 14, LMHL. Lewis Carroll, mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, frequently visited LMH and liked to invent complicated games of logic and puzzles.

29. Most of the biographical information comes from Courtney, Recollected in Tranquillity. 30. Elizabeth Mary Wright, The Life of Joseph Wright, 1:165. 31. Quoted in H.V.F. Winstone, Gertrude Bell, 19. 32. Janet Wallach, Desert Queen, 79. 33. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? 65. 34. Quoted in Gayle Graham Yates, ed., Harriet Martineau on Women, 82.

Chapter 6 1. The Clarendon Building, which sits on the corner of Broad Street near the Sheldonian Theatre, was built in 1713 to house the Oxford University Press. When the OUP moved to Walton Street in 1829, the Clarendon Building was used for administrative offices. It is now part of the Bodleian Library, the university library that opened in 1602. 2. Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 86. 3. Ibid., 88. 4. R. F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 1:33. 5. Ensconced at the top of the Clarendon Building, Annie Rogers inspired not a little fear in students in her new position, as the following verse attests: “Autocratic / in an attic / registrating / palpitating / students who have climbed the stairs.” The verse comes from the obituary of Annie Rogers, Brown Book, 1937, 33, LMHL. 6. Letter from Arthur Sidgwick to Mrs. Johnson, October 1894, SAA. 7. Brittain, Women at Oxford, 89 8. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 55. 9. Enid Huws Jones, Margery Fry, 50. 10. Hilda Lorimer obituary, Oxford Magazine, May 6, 1954, 302. 11. For this discussion of Somerville’s role in enhancing the position of tutors, I am largely indebted to Adams, Somerville for Women, 54–67. 12. Again, I relied on Adams, Somerville for Women, 60, for the information about old students. 13. A habit of W. A. Spooner, warden of New College from 1903 to 1924, has entered



14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 9. 1 20. 21.

22.

23.

4. 2 25. 26. 7. 2 28. 29. 30.

Notes to Pages 82–107 the Oxford English Dictionary with the word “spoonerism,” which means to accidentally transpose the initial sounds of two or more words. It is claimed that he dismissed an undergraduate by saying, “You have deliberately tasted two worms and you can leave Oxford by the town drain.” Although many of the spoonerisms attributed to him are probably apocryphal, numerous comical anecdotes exist about this unique character. Elizabeth Wordsworth, “Women Students at Oxford,” 151. Quoted in Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 22. St. Hugh’s Annual Report, 1907–1908, SHA. Letter from Miss Mordan to Miss Moberly, July 6, 1898, SHA. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 1:54. Ibid., 55. Elizabeth Raikes, Dorothea Beale, 236. Quoted in Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, 17 (hereafter, Centenary History). Rules of the Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford, January 1895, 13, SAA. Muriel St. Clare Byrne and Catherine Hope Mansfield, Somerville College 1879–1921, 77. Adams, Somerville for Women, 117. Edith Olivier, Without Knowing Mr. Walkley, 176, 177. Gemma Bailey, ed., Lady Margaret Hall, 61. Eleanor Lodge, Terms and Vacations, 49. Adams, Somerville for Women, 142. Katherine Cockin, Edith Craig, 58. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 82.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Chapter 7 1. Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, 268. 2. Barbara Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 44, 61. 3. In 1894, the full BA degree course involved three sets of examinations. (1) Responsions: Candidates were examined in Latin and Greek composition and elementary mathematics; they were required to pass responsions before

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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proceeding to the next examination. (2) First public examination: Candidates first had to pass divinity moderations (often called “divvers”), an examination in Scripture. Then, they could elect to take a pass examination (pass moderations) in Greek and Latin literature and either logic or the elements of geometry and algebra if they didn’t wish to go in for honours. The examinations for candidates seeking honours in classics or mathematics were called honour moderations. The examinations for candidates seeking honours in natural science or jurisprudence were called preliminary examinations. (3) Second public examination: Candidates not seeking honours could elect to take a pass examination in certain subjects. Honours candidates took examinations in one of seven honour schools: literae humaniores (greats), mathematics, natural science, jurisprudence, modern history, theology, or Oriental studies. English language and literature was shortly to become a recognized school (1894), but modern languages was not a final honour school until 1903; therefore, they were not part of the BA course at that time. Annie M.A.H. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 25–26. R. F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 1: 38. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 51. Ibid., 30. Georgina Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 141. The Newdigate Prize is awarded for English verse composition to a member of the university, who must compete within four years of matriculation. The winning author reads part of the composition aloud at a ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre. In 1927, Phyllis Hartnoll of St. Hugh’s became the first woman to win the prize. She went on to achieve distinction as a poet, musicologist, theatre historian, and publisher. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 32. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 1:43. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 37. Ibid., 38. Ibid., 39. Millicent G. Fawcett, “Degrees for Women at Oxford,” 354.

344

Notes to Pages 107–22

15. Thomas Case, “Against Oxford Degrees for Women,” 99. 16. Fawcett, “Degrees for Women at Oxford,” 353. 17. “Oxford and Women’s Degrees,” Manchester Guardian, March 4, 1896. 18. Annie Rogers, “Historical Reminiscences,” St. Hugh’s Chronicle 1928–29, 13, SHA. 19. “University Intelligence,” Manchester Guardian, March 11, 1896. 20. “University Intelligence,” Times (London), March 11, 1896. 21. Information about Trinity College degrees comes from Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 61. According to a Web site called measuringworth.com, one pound in 1904 was equivalent to slightly over seventy-five pounds in 2007. 22. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 54. 23. Quoted in ibid., 55.

Chapter 8 1. Cecil Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 328. 2. F.M.L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society, 47. 3. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, eds., Norton Anthology of English Literature, 897. 4. Ibid., 1030. 5. “The Angel in the House” is the title of a popular poem (1854) by Coventry Patmore. The poem is a hymn to married love and has been criticized as being too sentimental and too patronizing toward women. 6. Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, 179. In writing Shirley in 1849, Charlotte Bronte was ahead of her time in expressing anger about the useless and idle lives that so many women were condemned to lead. 7. Ray Strachey, Struggle, 223–24. Rachel (Ray) Strachey (1887–1940) was descended from a line of American Quakers. Educated at Newnham and Bryn Mawr, she spent most of her adult life working for women’s rights and writing. Her best-known book is The Cause: A Brief History of the Women’s Movement (1928).

8. In 1931, according to a survey that year by the International Federation of University Women, there were thirteen women professors in England and Wales (compared to 829 men) and 585 female lecturers (compared to 3,103 men). See Fernanda Perrone, “Women Academics in England, 1870–1930,” 363. 9. For Hilda Oakeley, see Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? 45–47. 10. I am indebted to Lynda Grier, The Life of Winifred Mercier, for the information contained in this paragraph. 11. Enid Huws Jones, Margery Fry, 67. 12. Ibid., 82. 13. A. C. Percival, Beatrice Blackwood obituary, Folklore 87, 1 (1976): 113. 14. Mary Stocks, Eleanor Rathbone, 46. 15. The National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship grew out of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. When the limited suffrage bill was enacted in 1918, giving the vote to women over thirty who were householders or wives of householders, many NUWSS members called for a new name to reflect this change in status. Instead of concentrating strictly on the vote, women members would now work to improve society in general and to educate women in the duties of citizenship. 16. In 1603, James I allowed Oxford and Cambridge to elect two members each to Parliament. Over the years, other universities gained representation, and by the end of the nineteenth century, there were nine university members in the House of Commons (Oxford, 2; Cambridge, 2; University of Dublin, 2; London University, 1; Edinburgh and St. Andrews combined, 1; Glasgow and Aberdeen combined, 1). In the 1918 Representation of the People Act, the university electoral system was overhauled. The representation for Oxford, Cambridge, and London University did not change, but other English universities (Durham, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bristol, and later, Reading) were combined into a single constituency and permitted to elect two members. The Scottish universities were



17. 18. 19. 0. 2 21.

22.

23. 24. 5. 2 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Notes to Pages 122–37 also combined into one constituency with three elected members, and the University of Wales was allowed one member. Queen’s University in Belfast elected one member, but Dublin University was no longer represented after the Irish Free State was established in 1922. University representation was eventually abolished by another Representation of the People Act in 1948. Norman Wilding and Philip Laundy, An Encyclopedia of Parliament (London: Cassell, 1958). Brian Harrison, “Constructive Crusader,” 99. Harold Nicolson, “Eleanor Rathbone,” Spectator, January 11, 1946. Stocks, Eleanor Rathbone, 259 Huws Jones, Margery Fry, 91. Olive Banks, The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists, 1:40. In Britain, the term “feminist” was not part of the language until the mid-1890s. George V created the Order of the British Empire in 1917 to recognize people who were helping the war effort as either civilians or combatants, and it included women in an order of chivalry for the first time. After the war, the king intended to use the order to acknowledge distinguished service to the arts and sciences, public service outside the civil service, and work with charitable and welfare organizations. The order has five grades (in descending rank): Knight/Dame Grand Gross of the OBE (GBE); Knight/ Dame Commander of the OBE (KBE/ DBE); Commander of the OBE (CBE); Officer of the OBE (OBE); Member of the OBE (MBE). Ruth Adam, A Woman’s Place 1910–1975, 62. Francesca M. Wilson, Rebel Daughter of a Country House, 171. Church Times, July 24, 1914. Sheila Fletcher, Maude Royden, 10, 12. Ibid., 14. Maude Royden, A Threefold Cord, 9. Christopher St. John obituary, Times (London), October 27, 1960. Dictionary of National Biography 1951–1960. Lee Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work, 196.

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Chapter 9 1. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 72. 2. From a list of rules for prospective students, Somerville College Oxford Report, December 1907, Somerville College Archives (hereafter, SCA). 3. From a list of rules for prospective students, Somerville College Oxford Report, 1908-9, SCA. 4. Adams, Somerville for Women, 72. 5. Deborah Gorham, Vera Brittain, 71. 6. A common room refers either to a group of people or to the actual room designated for the group’s use. The senior common room (SCR) is for senior members of the college, and the junior common room (JCR) for undergraduates. In 1958, Lincoln was the first to establish a middle common room (MCR) for graduate students. 7. Oxford Magazine, October 16, 1913, 12. 8. Muriel St. Clare Byrne and Catherine Hope Mansfield, Somerville College 1879–1921, 34, 35. 9. Adams, Somerville for Women, 86. 10. Georgina Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 179. 11. Ibid. 12. Janet Courtney, Ladies of Oxford, 242–43. 13. Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 158. 14. Letter from Rev. R. F. Dale to the LMH Council, March 10, 1908, LMH Council Minutes Album 5, 1906-1909, LMHA. 15. Oxford Magazine, October 27, 1910, 29. 16. The information in the first four paragraphs of this section largely comes from Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History, 24–31. 17. Mrs. Burrows’s brother offered a blunt assessment of Miss Beale’s treatment of his sister and niece: “You and Christine have sacrificed yourselves most ungratifyingly to a rapacious old being who has cared for nothing and nobody but her own self-importance.” Burrows Papers, BURR 004/20, SHiA. 18. Ethel Finlay, Senior Member Reminiscences: Finlay, SHiA. 19. Joan Evans, Prelude and Fugue, 68–69. 20. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 34.

346

Notes to Pages 138–56

1. Ibid., 23–24. 2 22. The information about Clara Mordan’s legacy comes from Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 33, and from Council Reports, SHA. 23. B.J.H. Pease, “Light Green Fingers,” St. Hugh’s Chronicle 1993–94, SHA. 24. “St. Hugh’s Garden,” St. Hugh’s Chronicle 1952, SHA. 25. Letter from Miss Moberly to Archdeacon Houblon, November 17, 1914, SHA. 26. C.A.E. Moberly and E. F. Jourdain, An Adventure, 44. 27. Quoted in Lucille Iremonger, The Ghosts of Versailles, 155. 28. Terry Castle, “Contagious Folly,” Critical Inquiry 17, 4 (1991): 741–72. 29. Iremonger, The Ghosts of Versailles, 283, 104. 30. Joan Evans, “An End to An Adventure,” Encounter, October 1976, 37. 31. Philippe Jullian, Robert de Montesquiou, 141. 32. Evans, Prelude and Fugue, 77. 33. Annie M.A.H. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 67. 34. Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Principles & Methods of University Reform, 195, 200. 35. Lawrence John Lumley Dundas, The Life of Lord Curzon, 3:384. 36. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 67.

Chapter 10 1. Report for the Committee of Council on Women Students, October 1909, SAA. 2. From the abstract of replies to questions about women students for the Committee of Council, February 24, 1909, SAA. One definition of delegacy from the Oxford English Dictionary reads: “In the University of Oxford, a permanent committee, or board of delegates, entrusted with special business.” 3. Report for the Committee of Council on Women Students. 4. “Lent Term at Oxford,” Times (London), March 25, 1910. 5. “The Women’s Delegacy Statute,” Oxford Magazine, June 9, 1910, 378. 6. Annie M.A.H. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 78. 7. Letter from Miss Rogers to Mrs. Johnson, August 12, 1910, SAA.

8. Marjorie Reeves, St. Anne’s, 8. 9. Letter from Miss Penrose to Miss Rogers, November 20, 1910, SAA. 10. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 80. 11. Ibid., 81, 84. 12. Quoted in Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 1:72. 13. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 87. 14. St. Hilda’s Chronicle, 1910, PUB 002/5, SHiA. 15. Other members of the MAS included women who also became recognized in their fields: Dorothy Rowe, cofounder and director of a theatre in Bournemouth; Charis Barnett Frankenburg, midwife and social worker; Muriel Jaeger, novelist; Margaret Chubb Pyke, birth-control activist; and Muriel St. Clare Byrne, writer, editor, and lecturer. 16. Gemma Bailey, ed., Lady Margaret Hall, 100–101. 17. Fritillary, 1910, SSA. Founded as a joint venture among Oxford women students in the 1890s, the magazine contained news about college activities and paid particular attention to debates of the OSDS, not hesitating to criticize individual speaker’s performances. 18. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 135. 19. Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 44. 20. Ellen S. Bosanquet, Late Harvest, SCA. 21. Charis Frankenburg, Not Old, Madam, Vintage, 68. 22. Doris Odlum, Senior Member Reminiscences: Odlum, SHiA. 23. Gladys Ainslee, Senior Member Reminiscences: Ainslee, SHiA. 24. Emily Penrose and Annie M.A.H. Rogers, “Report as to the Rules of Discipline in Force for the Women Students at the University of Oxford,” 1909, SSA. 25. Frankenburg, Not Old, Madam, Vintage, 59. 26. Barbara Reynolds, ed., The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 82. 27. Letter from Miss Burrows to Lady Plowden, December 1910, Burrows Papers, BURR 005/25, SHiA. 28. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 77. 29. Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 13. 30. Quoted in Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 135.

31. Frankenburg, Not Old, Madam, Vintage, 69. 32. Ibid., 57. 33. Viscountess Rhondda, This Was My World, 107. 34. Ibid., 104. 35. Jane Richmond, Senior Member Reminiscences: Richmond, SHiA. Mary Murray was married to Gilbert Murray, fellow of New College, who became Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford in 1908. He was a devoted, and much beloved, friend to women in Oxford and served on the Somerville Council for forty-eight years. He and his wife had been committed to the cause of women’s suffrage since their marriage in 1889. 36. Reminiscences of E. W. Rooke, Brown Book, 1928, LMHL. 37. Letter from Olive W. Sinclair and H. S. Davies-Colley, reprinted in the Somerville Students’ Association Report, 1910, 49, SCA. 38. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 32. 39. Club Paper, 1911, SHA. 40. Adams, Somerville for Women, 81. 41. Mary Stocks, My Commonplace Book, 107. 42. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 94. 43. These figures come from J. M. Winter, “Oxford and the First World War,” in Brian Harrison, ed., The History of the University of Oxford, 8:9 (volume 8 is hereafter referred to as HUO).

Chapter 11 1. Naomi Mitchison, All Change Here, 101. 2. Doris Dalglish, We Have Been Glad, 107. 3. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 90. 4. Barbara Reynolds, ed., The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 108. 5. Joanna Richardson, Enid Starkie, 40–41. 6. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, 474. Lucy Boston became a major writer of children’s books, although she did not publish her first novel until she was sixty-one. Her inspiration was a twelfthcentury manor house near Cambridge that she bought in 1939 and lovingly restored. She used the house and gardens as the principal setting in a series of books that

Notes to Pages 156–66

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she wrote over the next twenty-two years. Illustrated by her son Peter (her wartime marriage dissolved in 1935), the books were well received by readers and critics alike. She died in 1990, aged ninety-seven. Charis Frankenburg led an active life as social worker, certified midwife, and birth-control advocate while raising three sons and a daughter. She also worked as a journalist, contributing numerous articles to a variety of publications, and wrote books that offered commonsense advice to mothers about child care. Naomi Mitchison managed to fit enough for four or five lives into her long life (she died in 1999 at the age of 101). She was a political activist with radical views, a birth-control campaigner, a devoted member of the Highlands and Islands Development Council in Scotland, a serious botanist and gardener, and a world traveler. Her interest in southern Africa led to her being adopted as honorary mother to a tribe in Botswana, and she regularly visited the people there into her nineties. She is probably best known as an author, however, and her output was prodigious. She did not confine herself to a single genre but wrote historical novels, autobiographies, modern fiction, children’s books, and science fiction. Naomi contributed thousands of articles to newspapers, periodicals, and journals and was a prolific letter writer to people all over the globe. Vera Brittain was an influential figure for social and political change throughout her life (she died in 1970 at the age of seventy-seven). An ardent feminist and pacifist, she outlined her views in numerous books and articles and campaigned vigorously for these causes on the national and international levels. Vera also wrote poetry and fiction, and her autobiographies brought her lasting recognition (Testament of Youth, 1933; Testament of Friendship, 1940; and Testament of Experience, 1957). 7. Charis Frankenburg, Not Old Madam, Vintage, 78. 8. L. M. Boston, Perverse and Foolish, 94. 9. The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was set up in 1909 to provide aid for the sick and wounded in the event of war. No one expected volunteers to do more than

348

0. 1 11. 12. 13. 14. 5. 1 16.

17. 18. 9. 1 20. 21. 2. 2 23. 24. 5. 2 26. 27. 28. 29. 0. 3 31.

Notes to Pages 166–202 supplementary nursing, but their role expanded greatly when trained nurses could not keep up with the devastation of trench warfare. Often near the front lines, VADs achieved heroic status; they were called “the rose in No Man’s Land.” Boston, Perverse and Foolish, 138–40. See Mitchison, All Change Here. Brittain, Testament of Youth, 102. Vera Brittain, Chronicle of Youth, 154. Gemma Bailey, ed., Lady Margaret Hall, 132–34. Enid Huws Jones, Margery Fry, 108. Muriel St. Clare Byrne and Catherine Hope Mansfield, Somerville College 1879–1921, 52. R. F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 1:76. “Mr. Fisher on Women Students’ Duty,” Times (London), June 8, 1918. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 79. Reynolds, Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 105. Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 138. Adams, Somerville for Women, 95. Mary Barnham-Johnson, Senior Member Reminiscences: Barnham-Johnson, SHiA. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 1:80. Arthur Marwick, The Deluge, 129. The Times, The Times History of the War, 17: 452. Eleanor C. Lodge, Terms and Vacations, 185–87. Katharine Moore, Queen Victoria Is Very Ill, 114. Ina Brooksbank, “Bingles and Bicycles,” 35. Grace Jaffe, Years of Grace, 44. Quoted in Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 1:74.

Chapter 12 1. Harold Macmillan, “Oxford Remembered,” Times (London), October 18, 1975. 2. Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That. 3. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, 494. 4. Eights Week is the name given to the social highlight of Trinity term when college crews compete in boat races on the Thames at Oxford. 5. I am indebted to Pauline Adams,

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 5. 1 16. 17.

8. 1 19. 20. 1. 2 22. 23. 24. 25. 6. 2 27. 2 8. 29.

Somerville for Women, 100–104, for this account. C. E. Mallet, History of the University of Oxford, 983. Ann Thwaite, ed., My Oxford, 38–39. Ina Brooksbank, “Bingles and Bicycles,” 35. Brittain, Testament of Youth, 165. Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914–1959, 38. St. Hilda’s Chronicle, 1918, PUB 002/13, ShiA; Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 46. Rita McWilliams Tullberg, Women at Cambridge, 128. Annie M.A.H. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 97. Brittain, Women at Oxford, 150. “Women at Oxford,” Times (London), November 5, 1919. “University Intelligence,” ibid., February 18, 1920. Oxford Magazine, November 28, 1919, 123; Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 123–24, 96. Brittain, Testament of Youth, 151. McWilliams Tullberg, Women at Cambridge, 128. Commoners are undergraduates without a scholarship or exhibition. Adams, Somerville for Women, 152. Jessie Greaves, Senior Member Reminiscences: Greaves, SHiA. Anne Fremantle, The Three-Cornered Heart, 283. Audrey K. Groser, Senior Member Reminiscences: Groser, SHiA. Anne Grimwade, “Portrait of a Year—1939,” Ship, 1991, SACL. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 112. “A Hundred Years of Hall Gossip,” Brown Book, December 1978, LMHL. “First Oxford Women Graduates,” Times (London), October 15, 1920. Gemma Bailey, ed., Lady Margaret Hall, 90.

Chapter 13 1. Janet Howarth, “Women,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 360. 2. “Help for Women’s Colleges,” Times (London), November 30, 1922. 3. Howarth, “Women,” 359.

4. R. F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 2:1. 5. Letter from a parent, SAA. 6. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 2:5. 7. Marjorie Reeves, St. Anne’s, 15. 8. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 2:39; Reeves, St. Anne’s, 21. 9. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 2:36. 10. Amy Georgina Smith was born in 1861 and educated at a girls’ school in Brighton. In 1897, she married the wealthy Ernest Hartland and lived the life of a cultured, well-to-do lady. She apparently met a young Oxford woman archaeologist at a local archaeology society and was profoundly impressed by her learning and ability. It is speculated that this encounter may have contributed to Mrs. Hartland’s apparent regret at her own lack of a university education. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 2:112. 11. Ibid., 2:62. 12. Letter from Miss Jex-Blake, January 1921, LMH Council Minutes Album 7, 1914–1921, LMHA. 13. Eleanor Lodge, Terms and Vacations, 191. 14. Memorial to Lynda Grier, Brown Book, 1968, 25, LMHL. 15. Dr. Lynda Grier obituary, Oxford Magazine, November 10, 1967, 63. 16. H. E. Salter and Mary D. Lobel, eds., Victoria History of the County of Oxford, 3:342. 17. Georgina Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 212. 18. Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 52. 19. Enid Huws Jones, Margery Fry, 151. 20. Ibid., 150–51. 21. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 176, 178 22. Ibid., 178. 23. Jenifer Wayne, The Purple Dress, 63. 24. Nina Bawden, In My Own Time, 64. 25. Adams, Somerville for Women, 181. 26. Helen Darbishire, Somerville College Chapel Addresses and Other Papers, 12. 27. Adams, Somerville for Women, 354. I have quoted Pauline Adams specifically in the paragraphs on the Somerville chapel controversy, but I am indebted to her for almost all the material on the subject, which she covers in pages 181–85. 28. Joanna Richardson, Enid Starkie, 241.

Notes to Pages 203–23

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29. Georgina Ferry, Dorothy Hodgkin, 294. Ferry also explains that only twentyfour members make up the OM at any one time; “new members fill dead men’s shoes.” 30. Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History, 61. 31. Ibid., 77. 32. St. Hilda’s Chronicle, 1922, PUB 002/17, SHiA. 33. Joan Platts, Senior Member Reminiscences: Platt, SHiA. 34. Rayner, Centenary History, 55. 35. Ibid., 66, reminiscence of Muriel MacAdie (St. Hilda’s 1929). 36. The British Academy was established in 1902 to promote historical, philosophical, and philological studies. It is made up of scholars who are elected for distinction and achievement in the humanities and social sciences.

Chapter 14 1. Rachel Trickett, “The Row,” in Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 55. I am indebted to this chapter for much of the material on the crisis. 2. St. Hugh’s, Oxford Magazine, March 6, 1924, 348. 3. Trickett, “The Row,” 55. 4. Editorial, Oxford Magazine, January 24, 1924, 204. 5. Chancellor’s Decision, ibid., May 1, 1924, 393. 6. St. Hugh’s, ibid., March 6, 1924, 348. 7. Mary Warnock, A Memoir, 113. 8. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 44, 165–66. 9. Appointments, Oxford Magazine, June 12, 1924, 536. 10. Barbara Gwyer obituary, St. Hugh’s Chronicle, 1973–1974, 67, SHA. 11. Barbara Gwyer obituary, Times (London), February 19, 1974. 12. Georgina Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 207. 13. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 144. 14. Ibid., 144–45. 15. Trickett, “The Row,” 60. 16. The information on St. Hilda’s comes from Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History, 58–59. 17. Report of the Committee on the Number

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18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

3. 2 24. 25. 6. 2 27. 28. 9. 2 30. 31.

32.

Notes to Pages 224–39 of Undergraduates in Residence, December 5, 1925, LMH Council Minutes, Album 9, 1924–1926, LMHA. Letter from Ruth Butler to Christine Burrows, December 11, 1925, SAA. Draft of a reply from the LMH Council to the Hebdomadal Council, January 12, 1926, LMH Council Minutes, Album 9, 1924–1926, LMHA. Letter from E. S. Craig to Miss Grier, February 16, 1926, ibid. ”Women Students at Oxford,” Times (London), March 17, 1927. ”Women Students at the University of Oxford,” School and Society, July 2, 1927, 5, 6. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 184. Rayner, Centenary History, 60. Lucy Sutherland typescript, “Women in Oxford,” 1973, SCA. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 184. Sutherland typescript. Limitation Statute, Oxford Magazine, June 9, 1927, 558. Joseph Wells, “Women at Oxford,” 444. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 164. The first quote comes from ibid., 165, the second from Janet Howarth, “Women,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 357. Limitation Statute, Oxford Magazine, June 16, 1927, 579.

Chapter 15 1. The colleges were responsible for discipline within their own walls; the university had no jurisdiction there. The vice-chancellor and proctors were concerned with offenses committed by undergraduates outside the colleges and could administer fines and punishment commensurate with the severity of the offense. The proctors were assisted by the university police, popularly known as “bulldogs.” 2. Handbook to the University of Oxford, 365. 3. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 114. 4. Barbara Castle, Fighting All the Way, 43. 5. William Wahl, “An Interview with Margaret Rawlings,” in T. F. Wharton, Marston Balch, and William B. Wahl,

6. 7. 8. 9. 0. 1 11. 12. 3. 1 14. 15. 6. 1 17. 18. 19. 0. 2 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 8. 2 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 3 5. 36. 7. 3 38. 39.

“Yet I’ll Venture”: Moral Experiment in Early Jacobean Drama (Salzburg: Inst. f. Anglistik u. Amerikanstik, University of Salzburg, 1980), 98. Lewis Farnell, An Oxonian Looks Back, 295–96. Annie M.A.H. Rogers, Degrees by Degrees, 145. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 114. Anne Fremantle, The Three-Cornered Heart, 273. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 115. Diana Hopkinson, The Incense Tree, 83. “Reflections on a Hundred Years,” Ship, 1979, SACL. Castle, Fighting All the Way, 46. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 217. Memorial to Lynda Grier, Brown Book, 30, LMHL. David Sweetman, Mary Renault, 28. Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History, 74. R. F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 2:47. Katharine Trevelyan, Through Mine Own Eyes, 63. Adams, Somerville for Women, 167. Enid Huws Jones, Margery Fry, 145–46. Jenifer Wayne, The Purple Dress, 62. Adams, Somerville for Women, 220. Ibid. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, 578. Margaret Laing, ed., Woman on Woman, 216. Elizabeth Longford, The Pebbled Shore, 48. Ibid., 55. Castle, Fighting All the Way, 49, 50. Ibid., 54–55. Diana Athill, Instead of a Letter, 113. Keith Briant, Oxford Limited, 75. Letter from “Woman Undergraduate, 1933–36,” Oxford Magazine, December 2, 1937, 255. Longford, The Pebbled Shore, 83. Brian Harrison, “Politics,” in Harrison, ed., HUO, 391. “College Notes,” Oxford Magazine, March 4, 1937, 479; May 13, 1937, 602. Laing, Woman on Woman, 215. Rayner, Centenary History, 72. Bruce Reed and Geoffrey Williams, Denis Healey and the Policies of Power, 36.



40. 1. 4 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 7. 4 48.

Notes to Pages 240–52 Russia attacked Finland on November 30, 1939, leading to the Russo-Finnish War. Shiela Grant Duff, The Parting of Ways, 36. David Walter, The Oxford Union, 91. J. M. Winter, “Oxford and the First World War,” in Harrison, HUO, 24. Martin Ceadel, “The ‘King and Country’ Debate 1933: Student Politics, Pacifism, and the Dictators,” Historical Journal, 1979, 416. “The Powder and the Jam,” Times (London), July 12, 1935. “Problems of Oxford,” ibid., October 7, 1937. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 2:74. Annie Rogers obituary, Times (London), October 29, 1937. Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 53.

Chapter 16 1. R. F. Butler, ed. Saint Anne’s College, 2:70–71. Grace Hadow did not live to direct her Home-Students through the war. In the summer of 1938, she undertook an arduous trip to Australia and then sailed to the United States for a grueling six-week speaking tour in the hope of raising money for the society. Unfortunately, the tour netted only about £200. The long journey sapped her energy, but she allowed herself no time to recuperate when she returned to England. Friends knew that she was overtired, but even they were surprised by the speed with which pneumonia killed her in January 1940. She was sixty-four years old. 2. Nina Bawden, In My Own Time, 73. 3. On a visit to Somerville in 1940, Vera Brittain remarked to Fellow Vera Farnell that she was surprised Oxford had not been bombed. Farnell replied: “Well, they say here that Hitler’s keeping Oxford for himself. He wants it to look as it always has when he comes to get his Honorary Degree!” From Vera Brittain, England’s Hour, 158. 4. Whitehall is the section of London bordered by government offices, and the term has come to stand for the British government.

351

5. A. L. Rowse, “Oxford in War-Time,” 262, 261. 6. Quoted in Paul Addison, “Oxford and the Second World War,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 170. 7. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 239. 8. R. A. Denniston, “Publishing and Bookselling,” in Harrison, ed., HUO, 461. 9. Addison, “Oxford and the Second World War,” 178. 10. Adams, Somerville for Women, 193. 11. Brittain, England’s Hour, 158. 12. Edith Bülbring obituary, Times (London), July 11, 1990. 13. Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History, 85. 14. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 135. 15. Bawden, In My Own Time, 72. 16. Addison, “Oxford and the Second World War,” 169. 17. Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 194. 18. Much of the information in this and the foregoing paragraph comes from Addison, “Oxford and the Second World War,” 167–80. 19. “Dame Lucy Sutherland Memorial Supplement,” Brown Book, May 1981, 34, LMHL. 20. Georgina Ferry, Dorothy Hodgkin, 217. 21. Ibid., 133. Information about the Alembic Club comes from ibid., 216–18. 22. Ibid., 224. 23. “Dame Lucy Sutherland Memorial Supplement,” 15. 24. “Profiles,” New Yorker, January 30, 1989. Much of the information on Daphne Park comes from this profile and from Christina Hardyment, “The Lady Vanishes,” Oxford Today, Trinity 1989, 24–26. 25. Lettice Curtis, “The Pilot,” in Jonathan Croall, ed., Don’t You Know There’s a War On? 68. 26. From Alison King, Golden Wings: The Story of Some of the Women Ferry Pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary, 126. Barrage balloons were erected as a defense against dive-bombing and low-level attacks by enemy planes. The balloons, which were quite large, were anchored to steel cables that could be set at various heights by means of motorized winches. The cables were a deterrent to low-flying planes and were responsible for the destruction of

352

27. 28.

9. 2 30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 5. 3 36. 7. 3 38. 39. 0. 4 41. 42.

Notes to Pages 252–65 numerous German aircraft. By 1944, the number of barrage balloons in Britain numbered around three thousand, many centered over London and the surrounding area. This information comes from “Skylighters: The Story of the 225th AAA Searchlight,” at www.skylighters. org, part of the Veterans History Project. From Fleet Air Arm Archive 1939–1945, at www.fleetairarmarchive.net. Pauline Adams, ed., Janet Maria Vaughan 1899–1993, 35. Other information on Janet Vaughan comes from Leonie Caldecott, Women of Our Century, and Sybil Oldfield, Women Humanitarians: A Biographical Dictionary of British Women Active between 1900 and 1950. Jane Emery, Rose Macaulay, 267. Evelyn Irons obituary, Times (London), May 11, 2000. The Croix de Guerre was established in 1915 to honor feats of individual or group bravery in combat. It was authorized again in 1939. This information comes from the entry for Doreen Warriner in Oldfield, Women Humanitarians. Information on Cicely Williams primarily comes from her entry in Oldfield, Women Humanitarians, and from Sally Craddock, Retired. “Oxford Yesterday: The University at War,” Oxford Today, Trinity 1989, 57. Beryl Adams Newport, Senior Reminiscences: Newport, SHiA. Bawden, In My Own Time, 72. Addison, “Oxford and the Second World War,” 179. Ann Thwaite, ed., My Oxford, 167. “Reflections on a Hundred Years,” Ship, 38, SACL. Butler, Saint Anne’s College, 2:79. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 140, 139. Ibid., 142. “Vice-Chancellor’s Statement,” Oxford Magazine, May 10, 1945, 229–30.

Chapter 17 1. Clare Woodcock, administration officer at the University of Oxford, kindly supplied these figures through e-mail correspondence, September 4, 2002. 2. Nina Bawden, In My Own Time, 87.

3. “Women’s Colleges at Oxford,” Times (London), January 22, 1945. 4. This information about outside funding largely comes from Daniel I. Greenstein, “The Junior Members, 1900–1990: A Profile,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 46–49. 5. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 149. 6. “New Term at Oxford,” Times (London), October 14, 1946. 7. Vera Brittain, Women at Oxford, 204. 8. Greenstein, “The Junior Members,” 47. 9. The percentage was supplied by University Archives through e-mail with Clare Woodcock, June 6, 2007. 10. In 1940, ten Home-Students formally petitioned the delegacy for a new title, maintaining that few students now lived in their own homes and that no one outside Oxford thought the society had equal status with the other four women’s colleges. When a poll of old students showed that a large majority favored a name change, tutors and delegates, after much discussion, settled on St. Anne’s, mother of the Virgin Mary. The change to St. Anne’s Society was approved by congregation in March 1941 and by the king in council in July 1942. Societas Sanctae Annae (the Latin version was always used on official university occasions) was an improvement over the previous Societas mulierum Oxoniae privatim studentium, which was often abbreviated to the Soc.mul.Ox.priv. Stud. A 1942 Times obituary of H.E.D. Blakiston, vice-chancellor in 1920 and an opponent of degrees for women, reported that, when asked to approve Latin names for the women’s societies, he took his displeasure out on the Home-Students by saddling them with an awkward name. The Times commented that “Blakiston rarely went down without a parting shot.” 11. Eleanor Mary Plumer obituary, Oxford Magazine, November 24, 1967, 94. 12. Susan Cooper, “Snoek Piquante,” in Michael Sissons and Philip French, eds., Age of Austerity, 36. 13. Irene Mary Davis, Senior Member Reminiscences: Davis, SHiA. 14. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 146. 15. Edward Whitley, The Graduates, 123. 16. T.E.B. Howarth, Prospect and Reality, 59. 17. Cooper, “Snoek Piquante,” 48.

18. Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History, 121. 19. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 255. 20. Harold Nicolson, “Post-War Wardrobe,” in Comments, 1944–1948, 91–95, a collection of his weekly columns in the Spectator. 21. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 133–34. 22. Pearson Phillips, “The New Look,” in Michael Sissons and Philip French, eds., Age of Austerity, 146. 23. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 147. 24. Howarth, Prospect and Reality, 168. 25. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 151. 26. Peter Parker, For Starters, 43. 27. Whitley, The Graduates, 133. 28. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 141. 29. George Gardiner, Margaret Thatcher, 35. 30. Brian Harrison, “College Life, 1918–1939,” in Harrison, ed., HUO, 91. 31. Ludovic Kennedy, On My Way to the Club, 175. 32. Gardiner, Margaret Thatcher, 33. 33. David Walter, The Oxford Union, 166, 15. 34. Humphrey Carpenter, OUDS, 164. 35. The Experimental Theatre Club (the ETC) was founded in 1936 to offer a wider variety of entertainment—both lightweight and serious—than the OUDS, which was primarily committed to classical, particularly Shakespearean, drama. 36. Rayner, Centenary History, 117–18. 37. Shirley Sherwood, “Profile of 1952,” Ship, 1989, 42, SACL. 38. Adams, Somerville for Women, 323. 39. Entry for Elizabeth Mavor, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 14. 40. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 158–59. 41. Antonia Fraser quoted in Ann Thwaite, ed., My Oxford, 175. Antonia was the daughter of Elizabeth Harmon Longford, who had herself been an LMH student (see Chapter 15). Like her mother, she became a celebrated author. 42. David Shears, “The Roaring Forties,” in Alan Jenkins, ed., Hall, 123. 43. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 141. 44. “Proctorial Regulations,” Oxford Magazine, February 21, 1946, 194. 45. Oxford Magazine, February 9, 1950, 297; February 16, 1950, 314. 46. Sherwood, “Profile of 1952,” 41–42;

Notes to Pages 265–79

7. 4 48. 49. 50. 1. 5 52. 3. 5 54. 55. 56.

7. 5 58.

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Fraser quoted in Thwaite, ed., My Oxford, 174; Bawden, In My Own Time, 73. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 174. Edward Lucie-Smith, The Burnt Child, 134. Fraser quoted in Thwaite, ed., My Oxford, 174–75. Judith Vidal Hall, “Portrait of a Year—1957,” Ship, 1992, 44, SACL. Ibid., 43. Asa Briggs, A Social History of England, 302. Hall, “Portrait of a Year,” 43. Adams, Somerville for Women, 313. Ibid., 313–24. “Walls Still Remain for Women to Climb at Oxford,” Times (London), February 26, 1962. Hall, “Portrait of a Year,” 44. Ibid. Beyond the Fringe first appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960. It was written and performed by Peter Cook (Pembroke) and Jonathan Miller (St. John’s) from Cambridge and Alan Bennett (Exeter) and Dudley Moore (Magdalen) from Oxford.

Chapter 18 1. “Change in Examination System,” Times (London), February 26, 1952; Oxford Magazine, May 1, 1958; Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 265. 2. “Principal’s Letter,” Ship, 1950, SACL. 3. R. F. Butler, ed., Saint Anne’s College, 2:94. 4. Times (London), January 28, 1948. 5. Ibid, January 30, 1957. 6. The Norrington scoring system ranks colleges according to the academic success of their undergraduates on final examinations: five points for a first-class degree, three points for an upper second, two for a lower second, and one for a third. The final overall score is given as a percentage of the possible maximum score. 7. Christopher Hibbert, ed., The Encyclopedia of Oxford, 218. In 1964, LMH, Somerville, St. Anne’s, and St. Hilda’s were in the top ten; in 1965, LMH, Somerville, St. Anne’s, and St.

354

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 4. 1 15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 1. 2

2. 2 23.

24.

Notes to Pages 279–88 Hilda’s; in 1966, Somerville, St. Anne’s, St. Hugh’s, and St. Hilda’s; in 1967, LMH, Somerville, and St. Hilda’s; in 1968, Somerville and St. Hilda’s. Daniel I. Greenstein, “The Junior Members, 1900–1990: A Profile,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 62. Ann Thwaite, ed., My Oxford, 15. Antonia Fraser, quoted in Thwaite, ed., My Oxford, 179; Anne Bavin, “The Second-Class Sex,” New Statesman, April 28, 1961, 669. Quoted in ”Women’s Status at Oxford,” Times (London), October 21, 1959. Dame Lucy Sutherland Memorial Supplement, Brown Book, May 1981, 7. Oxford Magazine, March 3, 1960, 221. Jenifer Hart, Ask Me No More, 139. Georgina Ferry, “On Virtue and Its Rewards,” Oxford Today, Trinity 2001, 52–53. Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? 248. Men numbered 13,681 for the same period. Janet Howarth and Mark Curthoys, “The Political Economy of Women’s Higher Education in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” 215. Margaret Tuke, A History of Bedford College for Women, 1849–1937, 20. Barbara Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 144. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? 248. Christopher McKnight, letter to the editor, Oxford Magazine, May 27, 1965, 370. Ernest Barker, Age and Youth, 99–100. Dr. Anne Whiteman, “Women in Oxford since 1945,” transcript of a seminar at Nuffield College, Oxford, March 11, 1986, 2 (photocopy). Enid Gray (LMH 1935) recalled that each college (she did not mention HomeStudents) had a particular identity in her day—the ladies of LMH, the women of Somerville, the girls of St. Hugh’s, and the wenches of St. Hilda’s. If a man appeared at LMH, he would be greeted with, “Who’s your father?” At Somerville, “What are you reading?” At St. Hugh’s, “What game do you play?” At St. Hilda’s, “Come right in” (Reminiscences of Mary Enid Grant, Student Files, Box 3, 1934–1939, LMHA). In Mirror Writing,

Elizabeth Wilson (St. Anne’s 1955) recalled similar stereotypes:. “St. Hilda’s signified social success, St. Hugh’s was all about hockey and a grim kind of swotting, Lady Margaret Hall was socially correct, Somerville represented true scholarship. St. Anne’s, my own college, was the college of the well-adjusted” (44). 25. Winifred Peck, A Little Learning, 16 6. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 290. 2

Epilogue 1. Janet Howarth, “Women,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 373. 2. Merton admitted women before 1979 ended, and Christ Church and Oriel admitted women in 1980 and 1984, respectively. 3. The 1966 and 1989 figures come from Jenifer Hart, “Women at Oxford since the Advent of Mixed Colleges,” Oxford Review of Education 15, 3 (1989): 217–18. The figures for 2006–2007 come from the Student Numbers Supplement to the Oxford University Gazette, table 3, July 25, 2007. 4. On a national level, women professors in 2005–2006 composed 16.5 percent and women senior lecturers and researchers 30.8 percent of full-time academic staff. Press release 111, Higher Education Statistics Agency, Resources of Higher Education Institutions 2005–2006. 5. Michael Brock, “The University since 1970,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 749. 6. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 280. 7. Brock, “The University since 1970,” 747. 8. Although Oxford college administrators stress that academic excellence is one of their top priorities, many regret the attention that is paid to the Norrington Table, because it is alleged that small differences in performance can lead to major jumps up and down the scale. The administrators often emphasize that the value of an Oxford education or the worth of a particular college can be measured on many dimensions, not just by final examination results. For example, the tutor for admissions at St. Hugh’s, in a 1991 statement, maintained



9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

Notes to Pages 288–306 that the college wanted to treat its students as adults: “They’re not at school now. We don’t feel that the pressure for results exerted at some other colleges is necessarily in the academic interests of the students” (“Gender Blender,” Oxford Today, Michaelmas 1991, 45). Yet rankings continue to be of interest to college governing bodies, secondary school educators, prospective students and their parents, and, not least, the media. Christopher Hibbert, ed., The Encyclopedia of Oxford, 281. Online publication of Undergraduate Degree Classifications 2005–2006, University of Oxford, www.ox.ac.uk/ aboutoxford/facts/colleges. Margot Norman, “Why Men Get More Firsts,” Times (London), May 6, 1993. Daniel Greenstein, “Gender Results: Men and Women in the Schools, 1913–1986,” Oxford Magazine, 1987, 4–6. Judith Judd, “Secret of Men’s Success at Oxford Is Bluffing Their Way through Exams,” Independent, August 14, 2000, findarticles.com/p/articles. Claire Gilbert, “Balliol Celebrates Sisterhood,” Oxford Today, Hilary 1990, 51.

Appendix 2 1. Katharine M. Briggs obituary, Times (London), October 25, 1980. 2. Kathleen Chesney obituary, Times (London), April 15, 1976. 3. Dictionary of National Biography, 1931–1940, s.v. “Clarke, Maude.” 4. Evelyn Emmet obituary, Brown Book, 1981, 30. 5. Hilda Prescott obituary, Times (London), May 6, 1972. 6. Amy Dale obituary, Times (London), February 7, 1967. 7. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter, eds., An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, 227. 8. Marion Shaw, The Clear Stream, 257. 9. May McKisack obituary, Times (London), April 3, 1981. 10. Dilys Powell obituary, Sunday Times (London), June 4, 1995. 11. Shaw, The Clear Stream, 75; Hilda Reid obituary, Times (London), May 11, 1982.

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12. Something about the Author (Detroit: Gale Research, 1971), 1:187. 13. Enid Starkie obituary, Times (London), April 23, 1970. 14. Sylvia Thompson obituary, Times (London), April 29, 1968. 15. The acronym DCMG stands for Dame Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. The order is awarded to men and women who render extraordinary or important nonmilitary service in a foreign country and is usually given to members of the foreign, commonwealth, and colonial services. It is composed of three grades: Knight/Dame Commander Grand Cross (GCMG); Knight/ Dame Commander (KCMG and DCMG); Companions (CMG). 16. Kathleen Gibberd obituary, Times (London), May 20, 1992. 17. Margaret E. Rayner, Centenary History, 65. 18. Dictionary of National Biography, 1971–1980, s.v. “Woodham-Smith, Cecil.” 19. Barbara Reynolds, ed., Letters of Dorothy Sayers, 2:199.

Appendix 3 1. Josephine Barnes obituary, Times (London), December 29, 1999. 2. Nora Beloff obituary, Times (London), February 15, 1997. 3. Stacy Marking, ed., Oxford Originals, 219. 4. Rosalind Mitchison obituary, London Daily Telegraph, September 24, 2002. 5. C. V. Wedgwood obituary, London Daily Telegraph, March 15, 1997. 6. Janet Adam Smith obituary, Times (London), September 13, 1999. 7. The Man Booker Prize rewards the best novel of the year written in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. 8. Penelope Fitzgerald obituary, Times (London), May 3, 2000. 9. Dictionary of National Biography, 1971–1980, s.v. “Kenyon, Kathleen.” 10. Dictionary of National Biography, 1986–1990, s.v. “Laski, Marghanita.” 11. William McPherson on Mary Midgley,

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12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

Notes to Pages 306–22 Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Detroit: Gale Research, 1994), 43: 320. Kathleen Nott obituary, Times (London), February 24, 1999. Rachel Sylvester, “A Licence to Kill? Oh heavens, no!”London Daily Telegraph, April 24, 2003. E. J. Scovell obituary, Times (London), October 26, 1999. Quoted in Paul Schleuter and June Schleuter, eds., Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, 562. Kathleen Tillotson obituary, Times (London), June 6, 2001. Dictionary of National Biography, 1981–1985, s.v. “Ward, Barbara.” Lucille Iremonger obituary, Times (London), January 20, 1989. The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes have been awarded since 1919 for works of fiction and biography written in English and first published in Britain in the twelve-month period before the submission date. The nationality of the author is irrelevant. Schlueter and Schlueter, Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, 520. Dame Mary Douglas obituary, Independent online edition, May 22, 2007, news.independent.co.uk/people/ obituaries. Barbara Duncum obituary, Department of Anesthesiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham Web site, www.anes.uab. edu/aneshist/duncumobit Isobel Henderson obituary, Times (London), March 4, 1967.

Appendix 4 1. Thomas Lask on Hermione Hobhouse, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Detroit: Gale Research, 1985), 15:207. 2. The Warburg Institute’s purpose is to further study of the classical tradition, particularly “those elements of European thought, literature, art, and institutions which derive from the ancient world.” See warburg.sas.ac.uk/institute/institute_ introduction.htm.

3. Trevor Royle on Nina Bawden, Contemporary Novelists, 4th ed., ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 78. 4. Shirley Toulson on Christine BrookeRose, ibid.,141. 5. Patricia Beer obituary, Times (London), August 18, 1999. 6. Carol Rumens on Patricia Beer, Dictionary of Literary Biography, (Detroit: Gale Research, 1985) 40:22. 7. Quote from judges for the Roland Mathias Prize, a literary prize for Welsh writing in English, BBC online, June 27, 2007, BBC.co.uk/wales. 8. Paul Schlueter and June Schleuter, eds., An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, 96. 9. Brigid Brophy, Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1983), 14:139. 10. Rosemary Woolf obituary, Times (London), April 19, 1978. 11. Neil Philip on Nina Beachcroft, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Detroit: Gale Research, 1987), 19:59. 12. For quote, see Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2002), 110:150. 13. Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 671. 14. Teresa Valbuena and Jay L. Halio on Elizabeth Mavor, Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Research, 1983), 14:489. 15. David Morley, Guardian, November 22, 2003. 16. Peggy Woodford, Contemporary Authors (Detroit: Gale Research, 1982), 104:528.

Appendix 5 1. Vera Farnell, A Somervillian Looks Back, 76. 2. Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 252. 3. Ibid., 254. 4. Dame Lucy Sutherland Memorial Supplement to the Brown Book, May 1981, 24. LMHL. 5. Ibid., 18. 6. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 143.

7. Ibid., 227. 8. Lady Ogilvie obituary, Oxford Today, Trinity 1991, 37. 9. Miss Mann’s Retirement, Oxford Magazine, November 25, 1954, 59. 10. Georgina Ferry, “On Virtue and Its Rewards,” Oxford Today, Trinity 2001, 52. 11. Peter Conradi, Iris Murdoch, 283. 12. Elizabeth Anscombe obituary, Times (London), January 8, 2001. 13. Olive Davison (later Mrs. Sayce) left St. Hugh’s with a first in modern languages in 1946 and came to Somerville as lecturer in German in 1946, retiring as fellow in 1990. Ursula Brown (later Mrs. Dronke) came to Somerville in 1939 as a student and returned to become English tutor in 1947. She was elected fellow in 1950 and later held the position of reader in ancient Icelandic literature and antiquities in the university. Jean Banister (Edinburgh) was appointed Somerville’s first lecturer in physiology in 1949. She was elected fellow in 1951 and retired in 1984. Agatha Ramm (Bedford College) became modern history lecturer at Somerville in 1952, subsequently serving as fellow and university lecturer. She remained at Somerville until 1981. Rosemary Syfret (Girton College) was appointed treasurer and lecturer in English at Somerville in 1952, becoming a fellow in 1953. She became university lecturer in English in 1957. These women were important additions to Somerville’s staff, and as Pauline Adams has noted, formed the core of the college’s teaching strength over many years (Somerville for Women, 259). 14. Margaret Hall obituary, Times (London), March 10, 1995. 15. Kathleen Lea obituary, Times (London), March 21, 1995. 16. Wilma Crowther obituary, Oxford Today, Michaelmas 1989, 49. 17. The information on Lady Florey comes from her obituary in the Brown Book, April 1995, 66–71, LMHL. 18. The information and quote come from Alice Stewart’s obituary in the London Daily Telegraph, August 16, 2002. 19. Mary Warnock, A Memoir, 112. 20. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 165.

Notes to Pages 322–30

357

1. Ibid., 162. 2 22. Dr. Madge Adam obituary, Times (London), September 21, 2001. 23. Marjorie Sweeting obituary, Oxford Today, Trinity 1995, 53. 24. Warnock, A Memoir, 117. 25. Dorothy Bednarowska obituary, London Daily Telegraph, January 25, 2003. 26. Morton W. Bloomfield, “Recent Scholarship on Joachim of Fiore and His Influence,” in Ann Williams, ed., Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves (Essex: Longman, 1980), 23. 27. Mary McDonnell Cavaliero, comp., “Portrait of St. Anne’s—1947,” The Ship, 1988, 29, SACL. 28. In his biography Iris Murdoch: A Life, Peter J. Conradi wrote that Iris also resigned because of a mutual attachment to a woman colleague that alarmed Lady Ogilvie and that threatened scandal (457). 29. Jenifer Hart, Ask Me No More, 136. 30. Jenifer Hart obituary, Guardian, April 11, 2005. 31. Hart, Ask Me No More, 137–38. 32. From a reminiscence by Ann Thwaite, Senior Member Reminiscences: Thwaite, SHiA. 33. From a reminiscence by Celia Goodhart, Senior Member Reminiscences: Goodhart, SHiA. 34. Henrietta Leyser, “Beryl Smalley,” in Helen Damico and Joseph B. Zavaldi, eds., Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline (New York: Garland, 1995–2000), 1:322. 35. Reminiscence by Eleanor Wooller, Senior Member Reminiscences: Wooller, SHiA. 36. Reminiscence by Dora Thornton, Senior Member Reminiscences: Thornton, SHiA. 37. Adams, Somerville for Women, 187. 38. Ibid., 259 39. George W. Oakes, “The More Oxford Changes,” New York Times Magazine, October 14, 1956, 47. 40. Rayner, Centenary History, 86n4. 41. From Adams, Somerville for Women, 259, and Georgina Ferry, Dorothy Hodgkin, 167. 42. Warnock, A Memoir, 62. 43. Ibid., 19. 44. Griffin, St. Hugh’s, 164.

358

Notes to Pages 330–36

5. Warnock, A Memoir, 113. 4 46. Adams, Somerville for Women, 259. 47. Janet Howarth, “Women,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 369.

Appendix 6 1. Viscount Nuffield was William Morris (1887–1963), car manufacturer and philanthropist, who began producing cars in 1913 in Cowley, southeast of Oxford; by 1923, his company’s yearly turnover amounted to £6 million. He proved to be a generous benefactor to Oxford and gave millions of pounds to the university during his lifetime, much of which went to fund medical research and to establish chairs at Oxford. Created Viscount Nuffield in 1934, he provided the money to found Nuffield College in Oxford in 1937, a graduate institution designed to promote study and research in the social sciences. 2. The University Grants Committee, a committee of the British Treasury, was founded in 1919 to dispense block government grants to universities. Joseph A. Soares, in The Decline of Privilege, wrote that the UGC was set up as “a buffer between universities and the state, ensuring the freedom of the former while protecting the latter’s generosity from abuse” (23). Before the war, universities were not encouraged to rely on government money, but that trend was reversed after 1945. In the wake of social and political changes in Britain after the war, the UGC poured money into institutions of higher education, including traditionally independent Oxford and Cambridge. By 1952, government grants covered more than 60 percent of Oxford’s annual expenditures (24). 3. Almost all the material covering Somerville’s postwar expansion comes from Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women, 270–75. 4. From the Dame Lucy Sutherland Memorial Supplement to the Brown Book, May 1981, 17. LMHL.

5. “A Hundred Years of Hall Gossip,” Brown Book, December 1978, 53, LMHL. 6. Irene Churchill obituary, Brown Book, December 1961, 32–35. LMHL. 7. Penny Griffin, ed., St. Hugh’s, 205; succeeding citations of this source appear in the text as page numbers in parentheses. Joan Evans was also instrumental in setting up an endowment fund for St. Hugh’s in 1944. Acting anonymously, she put at the disposal of the college a sum that would, over eight years, amount to £20,000. In addition, she earned the gratitude of St. Hugh’s students who lived in Main Building. After spending an uncomfortable night on one of the rocklike beds at a 1953 Gaudy, she promptly replaced all the beds in Main with more comfortable ones. 8. Much of the information about St. Hugh’s building projects comes from ibid., 177–78, 186–88, and 303. 9. Marjorie Reeves, St. Anne’s, 35. 10. According to Reeves, St. Anne’s (47), the UGC grant amounted to about £63,000 in the end. 11. “New Wave of Building at Oxford,” Times (London), October 23, 1959. 12. Judith Vidal Hall, “Portrait of a Year—1957,” The Ship, 1992, 39. SACL. 13. Max Rayne (1918–2003), property tycoon and philanthropist, established the Rayne Foundation in 1962 with the aim of providing grants to benefit the arts, education, health and medicine, and social welfare and development. Lord Rayne was created a life peer in 1976. 14. “St. Hilda’s College, Oxford: Appeal for Funds,” Times (London), September 27, 1952. 15. Information about Miriam Sacher comes from her obituary, Times (London), October 25, 1975. 16. Margaret Rayner, Centenary History, 99. 17. Much of the information about St. Hilda’s building program comes from ibid., 95–100. 18. Janet Howarth, “Women,” in Brian Harrison, ed., HUO, 361.

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Nicolson, Harold. Comments, 1944–1948. London: Constable, 1948. Oldfield, Sybil. Women Humanitarians: A Biographical Dictionary of British Women Active between 1900 and 1950. London: Continuum, 2001. Pugh, Martin. Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1914–1959. London: Macmillan, 1992. Purvis, June. A History of Women’s Education in England. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991. ———. Women’s History: Britain 1870–1945. London: UCL Press, 1995. Rayner, Margaret E. The Centenary History of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. London: Lindsay Ross Publishing, 1993. Reed, Bruce, and Geoffrey Williams. Denis Healey and the Policies of Power. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1971. Reeves, Marjorie. St. Anne’s College: An Informal History 1879–1979. Oxford: Privately printed, 1979. Rogers, Annie M.A.H. Degrees by Degrees. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938. Rowse, A.L. Oxford in the History of England. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975. Salter, H. E., and Mary D. Lobel, eds. The Victoria History of the County of Oxford. Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, eds. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988. Sissons, Michael, and Philip French, eds. Age of Austerity. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1963. Soares, Joseph A. The Decline of Privilege: The Modernization of Oxford University. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Solomon, Barbara. In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Sondheimer, Janet. Castle Adamant in Hampstead: A History of Westfield College, 1882–1982. London: Westfield College, 1983. Spender, Dale, ed. The Education Papers: Women’s Quest for Equality in Britain, 1850–1912. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. Strachey, Ray. Struggle: The Stirring Story of Woman’s Advance in England. New York: Duffield, 1930.

Thompson, F.M.L. The Rise of Respectable Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. The Times. The Times History of the War. Vol. 4. London: The Times, 1915. ———. The Times History of the War. Vol. 17. London: The Times, 1918. Tinling, Marion. Women into the Unknown. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. Tuke, Margaret J. A History of Bedford College for Women. London: Oxford University Press, 1939. Turner, Barry. Equality for Some. London: Ward Lock Educational, 1974. Uglow, Jennifer, ed. The Macmillan Dictionary of Women’s Biography. London: Macmillan, 1982. Vicinus, Martha. Independent Women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. ———. A Widening Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. Walter, David. The Oxford Union: Playground of Power. London: Macdonald, 1984. Wells, Joseph, ed. Oxford and Oxford Life. Second ed. London: Methuen, 1899. Woodham-Smith, Cecil. Queen Victoria. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Harcourt Brace, 1929. Yates, Gayle Graham, ed. Harriet Martineau on Women. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1985.

A rticles and Book Chapters Ashley, Percy. “University Settlements in Great Britain.” Harvard Theological Review 4 (April 1911): 175–203. Brittain, Vera. “An Oxford Anniversary.” National and English Review 153 (1959): 115–18. Case, Thomas. “Against Oxford Degrees for Women.” Fortnightly Review 58 (1895): 89–100. Ceadel, Martin. “The ‘King and Country’ Debate, 1933: Student Politics, Pacificism, and the Dictators.” Historical Journal 22 (1979): 397–422. Collet, Clara. “Prospects of Marriage for Women.” Nineteenth Century 21 (January– June 1892): 537–52. Courtney, Janet. “Oxford and Women.” North

American Review 212, 777 (August 1920): 200–209. Craig, Barbara. “100 Years of Somerville.” American Oxonian, Fall 1979, 276–81. Fawcett, Millicent G. “Degrees for Women at Oxford.” Contemporary Review, March 1896, 347–56. Gordon, Alice M. “The After-Careers of University-Educated Women.” Littell’s Living Age 206 (July 1895): 110–14. Grier, Lynda. “Women’s Education at Oxford.” Revised by Dr. Lucy S. Sutherland. In Handbook to the University of Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Howarth, Janet. “ ‘In Oxford but . . . not of Oxford.’ ” In The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 7. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. “Women.” In The History of the University of Oxford, ed. Brian Harrison. Vol. 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Howarth, Janet, and Mark Curthoys. “The Political Economy of Women’s Higher Education in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain.” Historical Research 60 (June 1987): 209–31. Hutchins, B. L. “Higher Education and Marriage.” Englishwoman 18 (1913): 257–64. A Lady Undergraduate. “A Day of Her Life at Oxford.” Murray’s Magazine 3 (May 1888): 678–88. Major, Kathleen. “St. Hilda’s College.” American Oxonian, April 1961, 57–60. “Miss Wordsworth and Lady Margaret Hall.” Englishwoman’s Review, April 1909, 73–78. Moberly, Winifred H. “The Oxford Women’s Colleges.” Contemporary Review 119 (March 1921): 385–88. More, Paul Elmer. “Oxford, Women, and God.” Unpopular Review, April–June 1919, 275–93. Ogilvie, Lady Mary Ellen. “St. Anne’s College.” American Oxonian, July 1961, 118–22. Pearson, Norman. “Undergraduate Life at Oxford.” Lippincott’s 33 (1882): 66–75. Perrone, Fernanda. “Women Academics in England, 1870–1930.” In History of Universities. Vol. 12. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Proctor, Evelyn. “St. Hugh’s College.” American Oxonian, January 1961, 10–15. Rowse, A.L. “Oxford in War-Time.” In The

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English Spirit: Essays in History and Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1946. Sutherland, Gillian. “The Movement for the Higher Education of Women: Its Social and Intellectual Context in England, c. 1840–80.” In Politics and Social Change in Britain. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. Tuke, Margaret J. “Women Students in the Universities.” Contemporary Review, January 1928, 71–77. An Undergraduate. “A Day of His Life at Oxford.” Murray’s Magazine 3 (May 1888): 664–77. “The Undergraduate at Oxford.” Chambers’s Journal 4 (1901): 526–28. Vaughan, Janet. “Somerville College.” American Oxonian, July 1960, 23–25. Vicinus, Martha. “ ‘One Life to Stand Beside Me’: Emotional Conflicts in First-Generation College Women in England.” Feminist Studies 8 (Fall 1982): 603–29. Wells, Joseph. “Women at Oxford.” English Review, October 1927, 436–44. Whiteman, E.A.O. “Women in Oxford since 1945.” Transcript of seminar at Nuffield College, Oxford, March 11, 1986, 1-31. “The Woman-Student at Oxford.” Chambers’s Journal 6 (1903): 30–32. “Women at Oxford and Cambridge.” Littell’s Living Age 186 (1898): 219–33. Wordsworth, Elizabeth. “Women Students at Oxford.” Englishwoman’s Review, July 1910, 149–52. Zimmern, Alice. “Women at the Universities.” Littell’s Living Age 218 (July 1898): 30–38.

College Publications Association for the Education of Women Students annual reports Lady Margaret Hall, The Brown Book Lady Margaret Hall Register, 1990 Society of Oxford Home Students annual reports Somerville College Register, 1959 Somerville College Report St. Anne’s College, The Ship St. Hilda’s College Centenary Register, 1993 St. Hilda’s College, Chronicle St. Hugh’s College, Chronicle St. Hugh’s College, Club Paper

Index Page numbers for photographs are in boldface.

Adam, Madge, 326 Adams, Pauline on assimilation of women, 274 on bicycles, 89–90 on discipline, 235 on Emily Penrose, 131, 158–59, 186 on Helen Darbishire, 210 on married women as dons, 329–30 on mixed colleges, 288 on poignant celebration (1914), 133 on quota for women, 228 on Somerville’s chapel, 212 on Somerville’s Parliament, 152 on students, 272 Adrian, Hester, 294 Adventure, An. See Jourdain, Eleanor; Moberly, (Charlotte) Anne Ady, Cecilia, 143, 217–20 Ady, Peter, 327 Ainslie, Gladys, 153 Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), 252 Alexander, Mary, 266 Allen, Mary Gray, 220–21 Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett, 169, 338n8 Anderson, Louisa Garrett, 169 Andrews, Alice, 85 Anscombe, Elizabeth, 324, 329 Argles, Edith, 59–60 Armstrong, Elizabeth Tyler, 324 Arnold, Matthew, 7, 39, 63 Associated Prigs, 121, 151 Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford (AEW) administration, 22 demise, 202 duties, 22, 27–28, 30–32, 36, 50–51, 76 established, 21–22 friction with Somerville, 75



involvement in first degree campaign (1894–1896), 101–10 relationship to St. Hilda’s, 85–87 requested opening men’s examinations to women, 46 response to proposed delegacy for women students, 146–47 Athill, Diana, 237, 301 Aurora Leigh (E. B. Browning), 113 Austen, Jane, 2 Bacon, Margaret, 317 BA degree, 343n3 Ballinger, Margaret, 294 Banister, Jean, 324, 357n13 Bannister, Roger, 264 Barker, Ernest, 283 Barnes, Josephine, 301 Barnett House, Oxford, 129, 173 Battiscombe, Georgina, 301 Bavin, Anne, 279 Bawden, Nina, 211, 245, 256–57, 261, 271, 313 Baxter, Kathleen, 300 Beachcroft, Nina, 316 Beale, Dorothea amalgamated Oxford and Cheltenham colleges, 135 death, 135–36 disliked competition for girls, 6, 337n7 founded St. Hilda’s, Oxford, 84–87 founded training department for teachers, 9 principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, 4 subject of rhyme, 338n7 Beckett, Sister Wendy, 317 Bedford College, London, 4–5, 9, 281–82 Bednarowska, Dorothy, 327 Beer, Gillian, 318

367

368

Her Oxford

Beer, Patricia, 315 Bell, Gertrude, 36, 39, 44, 70–71, 170 Beloff, Nora, 301 Benn, June, 313 Bennett, Mary, 304 Benson, Margaret (Maggie), 39, 40, 42, 44, 67–68 Beyond the Fringe, 273, 353n58 Bidgood, Ruth, 315 Bieber, Margarete, 246 Bishop, Joyce, 293 Blackwood, Beatrice, 119–20 Blakiston, Herbert Edward Douglas, 352n10 Boston, Lucy (Wood), 165–66, 347n6 Bowra, Maurice, 277, 280 Bradby, Barbara, 118–19 Bradby, Dorothy, 66 Bradford, Sarah, 311 Briant, Keith, 237–38 Briggs, Asa, 272 Briggs, Katharine Mary, 293 British Academy, 349n36 Brittain, Vera, 97 career, 347n6 pacifism, 255–56 protest letter, 241 quoted, xvi, 9, 74, 76, 131, 165, 172, 184, 236, 247, 262 recuperation, 177–78 World War I experience, 164, 167–68 Bronte, Charlotte, 113, 114, 344n6 Brooke-Rose, Christine, 313 Brooksbank, Ina, 174, 179 Brophy, Brigid, 315 Broster, Dorothy K., 128, 190 Brown, Ursula, 324, 357n13 Browne, Stella, 123 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 113 Bruce, Alice, 64, 77, 228 Bülbring, Edith, 246, 247 Bull, Angela, 315 Burgon, John William, 49 Burns, Anne Pellew, 307 Burrows, Christine, 86, 118, 149, 207, 214, 291, 345n17 principal, Society of Oxford Home-Students, 204–5, 224 principal, St. Hilda’s, 136–37, 153, 155, 213 women’s suffrage supporter, 157 Burrows, Esther, 86, 136, 345n17 Burton, Hester, 309 Busbridge, Ida, 326 Buss, Frances Mary, 4, 6, 337–38n7

Butler, Gwendoline, 311 Butler, Marilyn, 316 Butler, Ruth describing Christine Burrows as principal, 205 objection to proposed quota, 224 opposed to changing Home-Students’ name, 207 opposed to collegiate status for St. Anne’s, 275–76 secretary to Bertha Johnson, 27–28 on World War I, 170, 172 on World War II, 242 Butler, Violet, 129 Byrne, Muriel St. Clare, 190, 295 Caird, Edward, 89, 109 Caldicott, Fiona, 317 Cambridge Examinations for Women, 10–11 Cambridge Local Examinations, 5–6, 8 Cambridge University allowed women to take tripos examination, 11 established Cambridge Examinations for Women, 11 opened Local Examinations to girls, 5–6 permitted halls of residence for women, 11–13 ratio of women to men (1924–1925), 223 refused degrees to women (1896), 13 refused degrees to women (1920), 185 World War I casualties, 175 Cameron, Averil, 313 Campbell, Juliet, 311 Caro, William, 278 Carroll, Lewis (C. L. Dodgson), 68, 88–89, 107, 342n28 Cartwright, Mary, 298 Case, Thomas, 48, 107 Cassel, Ernest, 200 Cassel Trust, 200, 214 Cassidy, Sheila, 313 Castle, Barbara, 230–31, 234, 236–37, 308 Ceadel, Martin, 240 Census (1851), 1, 112 Chain, Ernst, 249, 250 chaperones abolished for lectures, 88 AEW role, 22 freedom from, 42, 88–89 required for women students, 30–31, 36, 42–43, 88–89, 230–31, 233 Chapman, Vera, 293

Cheltenham Ladies’ College, 4, 9, 65, 88, 222, 337n7 Chesney, Kathleen, 215, 293 Chibnall, Marjorie, 301 Chilver, Elizabeth, 304 Churchill, Caryl, 311 Churchill, Irene, 332–33 Clarendon Building, 74, 150, 202, 342n1 Clarke, Maude, 212, 293 Clayton, Mary, 315 Clayton, Sylvia, 311 Clothworkers’ Company, London, 179 Clough, Anne Jemima, 10, 13 Coate, Mary, 299 Cobbe, Anne, 324 Cobbe, Winifred, 59 Coltman, Constance Todd, 128 Common University Fund (CUF), 323–24 Compton Burnett, Ivy, 119 Congregation abolished quota on women students, 276–77 approved degrees for women, 183 approved St. Anne’s as college, 276 defined, 340n3 and Delegacy for Women Students, 147–48 favored full collegiate status for women’s colleges, 280 in first degree campaign, 105–9 imposed quota on women students, 225, 227 opened men’s examinations to women, 46–47 and special permission for Cornelia Sorabji, 66 Convocation abolished compulsory Greek for responsions, 184 approved degrees for women, 183 bestowed honorary degrees on war leaders, 260 bestowed honorary MAs, 188 defined, 341n4, 341n7 and Delegacy for Women Students, 147–48 opened men’s examinations to women, 47–48 Coombs, Edith, 60 Cooper, Lettice, 293–94 Cooper, Susan, 313 Courtney, Janet Hogarth, 29–30, 38–39, 43, 61, 69, 133–34 Courtney, Kathleen, 125–26, 170 Craig, Barbara, 304, 322

Index

369

Crallan, Eveline, 234 Creighton, Mandell, 18, 339n6 Crowfoot, Dorothy. See Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowther, Wilma, 325 Curtis, Lettice, 252 Curzon, George Nathaniel, 135, 143–45, 159, 181, 201, 218–19 Czaplicka, Marya, 295 Dale, Amy, 295 Dalglish, Doris, 162 Dally, Ann, 313 Darbishire, Helen offered appointments to Jewish scholars, 246–47 principal, Somerville College, 118, 210–11, 235–36, 291, 321, 329 tutor, Somerville College, 131 Davies, Emily antagonism toward Newnham College, 13 background, 5, 338n8 belief in women’s right to education, 5 and Cambridge Local Examinations, 5–7 contribution to education for women, 14 disliked special examinations for women, 5, 10 established Hitchin College (later Girton College), 11–12 feelings about college vs. home, 38–39, 282 and Schools Enquiry Commission, 7–8 Davis, Irene Mary, 264 Dawson, Jennifer, 318 Day, Robin, 267 Degrees by Degrees, 48, 103, 149 degrees for women Cambridge and, 13, 185 Emily Penrose and, 130, 158–59, 187 first degree campaign at Oxford (1894–1896), 100–109 Great Britain and, 99–100 John Stocks and, 159–60 Lord Curzon and, 144–45 Oxford and, 182–84, 187–89 Trinity College Dublin and, 110–11 university electors and, 181 De la Mare, Albinia, 311 Delegacy for Home-Students, 202, 205, 224, 275 Delegacy for Women Students, 148–51, 186, 202 Delegacy of Local Examinations (Oxford), 20, 29, 46–48, 50, 100–101, 147 Deneke, Helena, 158, 189, 208

370

Her Oxford

Dicey, Albert Venn, 47, 108 Douglas, Mary, 309 Downing, Kate, 60 Duncom, Barbara, 309 Earle, Rosamund, 72 Education Act (1944), 262 Elliott, Janice, 318 Ellis-Fermor, Una Mary, 295 Emma (J. Austen), 2 Emmet, Dorothy, 302 Emmet, Evelyn, 294 Endowed Schools Act (1869), 8 Esdaile, Katharine A., 119 Essex, Rosamund, 213 Evans, Joan attitude toward Eleanor Jourdain, 217 benefactor to St. Hugh’s, 333, 358n7 biographical sketch, 298–99 examinations and degrees, 187, 189 explanation for Versailles adventure, 141–42 student at St. Hugh’s, 137, 143 Everett, Dorothy, 325 examinations, Cambridge and Hitchen College, 11–12 Local Examinations opened to girls, 5–6 special women’s examinations, 10–11, 12–13 examinations, Oxford created anomalous situation, 50–51 definitions of, 339n8, 339n9, 340n30, 343n3 opened men’s examinations to women, 46–48, 50, 149, 179–80 special women’s examinations, 20, 29, 40 women students’ exemptions, 20, 29, 100 Experimental Theatre Club, 268, 353n35 Fairlie, Alison, 308 Faithfull, Lilian, 41, 45, 57–58, 64–65 Fanthorpe, Ursula A., 318 Farnell, Lewis, 109, 231–32 Farnell, Vera, 49, 210, 321, 324, 351n3 Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 107, 126, 180 Fisher, Herbert Albert Laurens, 124, 132, 171 Fisher, Lettice (Ilbert), 83, 124, 149 Florey, Howard, 249, 325 Florey, Margaret (Margaret Jennings), 325 Foot, Philippa, 281, 324–25 Forster, Margaret, 313 Fox, Evelyn, 123–24 Fox, Hazel, 314

Frankenburg, Charis Barnett, 154, 156, 165, 346n15 Fraser, Antonia, 269, 271, 279, 311 Fremantle, Anne, 187, 233, 302 Fritillary, 346n17 Fry, Margery, 93 biographical information, 122–23 debenture scheme, 131–32 librarian, Somerville College, 78 principal, Somerville College, 118, 209–10, 235, 291 warden of women students, Birmingham University, 118 and World War I, 169 Fry, Roger, 123, 210 Further Education and Training Scheme (FET), 262 Gandhi, Indira, 304 Gardner, Helen, 328 Gardner, Percy, 105–7 Geldart, William Martin, 183 Gerrans, Henry T., 146 Ghosts of Versailles (L. Iremonger), 141, 308 Gibberd, Kathleen, 299 Gibson, Winifred Margaret, 300 Gilmore, Joyce, 265 Girls’ Public Day School Company (later Trust), 8, 58 Girton College, Cambridge, 9, 12–13 Glasgow, Mary, 302 Glendinning, Victoria, 314 Glover, Mary, 295 Goodhart, Celia, 317 Goldie, Grace Wyndham, 304 Goldring, Mary, 302 Gordon, Alice, 61 Governesses’ Benevolent Institution (GBI), 3 Graham, Marion, 267 Graham, Rose, 119, 190 Grand, Sarah (Frances Elizabeth McFall), 115 Grant Duff, Shiela, 239–40 Graves, Robert, 177 Gray, Enid, 354n24 Gray, Nicolete, 302 Green, Cecilia, 264 Green, Celia, 314 Green, Charlotte, 15, 19, 22, 27, 149, 338n1 Green, Thomas H., 18, 338–39n6 Greenstein, Daniel I., 279, 289 Grey, Maria, 8–9 Grier, Lynda, 207–9, 224–25, 234, 291, 321 Griffiths, Elaine, 327

Grose, Thomas Hodge, 101, 108 Groser, Audrey, 187 Gwyer, Barbara, 118, 220, 234, 237, 258, 291, 322 Hadow, Grace death, 351n1 principal, Society of Oxford Home-Students, 118, 205–6, 234, 291 quoted, 201, 244 and World War I, 173 Haigh, Lilla, 32, 59 Hall, Judith Vidal, 272, 273, 334 Hall, Margaret, 325 Hammond, John Lawrence, 119 Hammonds, Dorothy, 128–29 Harkness, Mrs. E. S., 208–9 Harrison, Brian, 238 Hart, Jenifer, 278, 281, 327–28 Hartland, Amy, 206, 275, 349n10 Hartnoll, Phyllis, 308, 343n8 Harvey, Barbara, 314, 324 Hayter, Alethea, 302 Hayter, Teresa, 311 Haythorne, Winifred, 170 Headlam-Morley, Agnes, 326 Healey, Edna, 234 Hebdomadal Council abolishing the quota on women and, 276 AEW Committee and, 74 Annie Rogers and, 224–25, 242 considers degrees for women (1918), 182 defined, 340n2 Delegacy for Women Students and, 146–47, 149 first campaign for degrees and, 103–6 on limiting the numbers of women students, 223–25 Lord Curzon’s reform proposals and, 145, 159–60 opening men’s examinations to women and, 46–47 order of examinations and, 274 powers, 340n4 St. Hilda’s Hall and, 88 women as voting members, 280 Henderson, Isobel Munro, 212, 310, 329 Hicks, Ursula Webb, 296 higher education for women (excluding Cambridge and Oxford) in the British Commonwealth, 99 career opportunities, 58–59, 116, 354 in Great Britain, 4–5, 14, 99–100, 281–82

Index

371

objections to, 21, 26, 47, 49, 57, 201, 278, 282–83 numbers in, 281–83 rationales for, 49, 51, 61–62, 73, 201, 278, 282–83 in the United States, 99 Hill, Gladys, 296 Hill, Rosalind, 309 Hindmarsh, Irene, 311 Hitchin College, Cambridge, 11–12 Hobhouse, Hermione, 311–12 Hodgkin, Dorothy, 213, 235, 247, 249–51, 329 Holtby, Winifred, 177–78, 241, 296 Holywell House, 202 Home, Anna, 318 Hopkinson, Diana, 233 Horne, Dorothy, 152 Howarth, Janet, 336 Howarth, Thomas Edward Brodie, 266 Hudson, Anne, 316 Hughes, Catherine Pestell, 317 Hurlbatt, Ethel, 64 Hurlbatt, Kate, 64 Hutchins, Barbara L., 62 Huxley, Julia Arnold, 63 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 63 Ilbert, Lettice (Lettice Fisher), 83, 124, 149 Inglis, Elsie, 172–73 Innes, Sheila, 312 Iremonger, Lucille, 141, 308 Irons, Evelyn, 253–54, 296 Jacobs, Margaret, 262 Jaeger, Muriel, 190, 346n15 Jamison, Evelyn, 79 Jay, Margaret, 314 Jay, Peggy, 305 Jebb, Eglantyne, 124–25, 170 Jennings, Elizabeth, 269, 318–19 Jennings, Margaret (Lady Florey), 325 Jessel, Penelope, 305 Jex-Blake, Henrietta, 124, 174, 188–89, 207, 208, 291 Jobson, Rosalie, 168–69 Johnson, Arthur, 19, 27–28 Johnson, Bertha attended first degree ceremony for women, 186, 189 early involvement in Oxford women’s education, 19, 22, 25 first woman to receive appointment from Oxford University, 149

372

Her Oxford

Johnson, Bertha, continued gratitude from Anne Moberly to, 55 opposed creation of women’s delegacy, 148 opposed degrees for women (1895–1896), 102–10 principal, Society of Oxford Home-Students, 27–28, 76, 84, 150, 291 retired as principal, 208 secretary of the AEW, 27, 32, 75–76 Jones, Diana Wynne, 319 Joseph, Jenny, 317 Jourdain, Eleanor background, 68 principal, St. Hugh’s, 118, 142–43, 174, 216–19, 291 role in St. Hugh’s “row,” 217–19 tutor, St. Hugh’s, 83 Versailles adventure and, 140–42 women’s suffrage supporter, 157–58 Jourdain, Margaret, 119 Jullian, Philippe, 142 Keble College, Oxford, 16–17, 288 Keen, Mary, 312 Kemp, Emily, 65, 212 Kendall, Elizabeth, 72–73 Kennedy, Ludovic, 267 Kennedy, Margaret, 296 Kenyon, Kathleen, 305, 333 “King and Country” debate, 240 Kirkaldy, Jane, 64, 77, 83, 92 Kitzinger, Sheila, 316 Labour Club, 237, 239, 240, 267–68 Labowsky, Lotte, 324 Lady Carlisle Research Fellowship, 190, 300, 324 Lady Margaret Hall academic standing, 279, 288, 353–54n7 admitted men on junior and senior levels, 287 affiliation with settlements, 60 Anglican tradition, 21, 23, 37, 43, 124 appointment of principals, 23–24, 134, 207–8, 291 beginnings, 21, 23–24, 26 buildings and property, 25, 81, 134–35, 208–9, 323–33 cheese lunch scheme, 238–39 council and the quota proposal, 224 early students’ careers (1879–1910), 66–71, 118–19, 124–27 elected male principal, 287



finances, 134, 200, 208–9, 336 flu epidemic (1918), 174 governance, 23, 81, 275–76, 280–81 identity, 23, 43–44, 124, 354n24 jubilee celebration, 209 life in college, 33, 35–45, 94–95, 98, 152, 196 married fellows, 329 notable graduates (1910–1960), 293–94, 301–4, 311–13 origin of name, 24 quota on women students, 226 royal charter, 221–22 rules and restrictions, 35, 89 tutors, 81, 325–26 Laing, David, 3 Lambert, Angela, 317 Lambert, Margaret, 302 Lane, Margaret, 308 Langridge, Edith, 68 Larkin, Philip, 257, 309 Lascelles, Mary, 212, 294 Laski, Marghanita, 305 Lea, Elizabeth (Mrs. Joseph Wright), 40–41, 69–70 Lea, Kathleen, 325 Lectures for Ladies, Oxford, 19–20 Lee, Margaret L., 204 Lees, Beatrice, 78 Leslie, Shane, 278 Levett, Elizabeth, 215 Levick, Barbara, 316 Leys, Agnes, 215, 299 Liddon, Henry Parry, 21, 47 limitation of numbers statute, 222–28. See also quota on women undergraduates Lindsay, Alexander Dunlop, 182, 225–26, 242, 247 Lively, Penelope, 319 Lodge, Eleanor, 88, 90, 117, 119, 149, 174, 190, 207–8 Longford, Elizabeth, 236, 238–39, 302–3 Lorimer, Hilda L., 78, 172–73 Lucie-Smith, Edward, 271 Macan, Reginald Walter, 109 Macaulay, Rose, 128, 253 MacCarthy, Fiona, 312 Macmillan, Harold, xv, 176 Maitland, Agnes, 74–75, 77–78, 80–81, 86, 104, 291 Major, Kathleen, 291, 323, 336 male undergraduates at Oxford



Index



Mogford, Margaret, 270 Montagu, Jennifer, 312 Moore, Katharine, 174, 294 Moore, Mary, 312, 366 Mordan, Clara, 83, 138–39, 157, 220 Morris, William (Lord Nuffield), 331–32, 358n1 Morrison, Christine (Kirstie), 327 Muir, Helen, 306 Murdoch, Iris, 327, 357n28 Murray, Amelia, 3 Murray, Flora, 169 Murray, Gilbert, 132, 171, 186, 347n35 Murray, Mary, 157, 171, 347n35 Murray, Rosemary, 303 Murray’s Magazine (1888), 33–34 Mutual Admiration Society, 151, 346n15

attitude toward disciplinary rules, 230, 232–33, 270–72 attitude toward women, xv, 42, 155–61, 222–23, 230–31, 269–70 and dissent, 239–42 and housing difficulties, 261–63 and mixed colleges, 288–89 pickaxe incident at Oriel, 178 postwar adjustment (WWI), 176–79 postwar life in Oxford (WWII), 266–69 sexual double standards for men and women, 232, 235, 273 and World War I, 160, 162, 175 and World War II, 247–48, 259 Malone, Leah L’Estrange, 190 Mander, Rosalie Glyn Grylls, 303 Mann, Julia de Lacy, 213–14, 265, 277, 291, 323, 336 Manohar, Sujata, 312 Maria Grey Training College, 9 Martineau, Harriet, 73 Mary, Queen, 117, 201 Mary Somerville Research Fellowship, 79, 324 Massey, Raymond, 179 Matheson, Hilda, 129 matriculation, 17, 191, 229, 188–89, 338n3 Matthew, Isobel, 188–89 Maurice, Frederick Denison, 3–4 Mavor, Elizabeth, 269, 319 McKisack, May, 212, 296–97, 324 McKnight, Christopher, 283 McWilliams, Jean, 170 McWilliams Tullberg, Rita, 181, 185 Mercier, Winifred, 117 Meynell, Alix, 305 Midgley, Mary, 305–6 Millett, Kate, 317 Mills, Barbara, 312 Mitchell, Elizabeth, 190 Mitchell, Juliet, 319 Mitchison, Naomi (Haldane), 166–67, 241, 347n6 Mitchison, Rosalind, 303 mixed colleges, 279, 285–90 Moberly, (Charlotte) Anne background, 52 principal, St. Hugh’s, 52–53, 55–56, 82–83, 137–39, 142, 291 resentment toward Elizabeth Wordsworth, 55 Versailles adventure, 140–42 Moberly, Winifred, 118, 188, 200, 213, 227, 291

373

National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), 121, 126, 344n15 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), 121, 157 Nettleship Library, 149, 202–3 Neville-Jones, Pauline, 312 Newdigate Prize, 343n8 New Look, 265–66 Newnham College, Cambridge, 12–13 Newport, Beryl, 256 “New Woman,” 115 Nichols, Irene, 67 Nicolson, Harold, 122, 265 Noether, Emmy, 246 Norrington, Arthur, 279 Norrington Table, 279, 285, 288, 353n6 North London Collegiate School, 4, 6, 8, 337–38n7 North of England Council for the Promotion of the Higher Education of Women, 10 Nott, Kathleen, 306 Oakeley, Hilda, 117 Oberlin College, Ohio, 99 October Club, 239 Odlum, Doris, 129, 153, 190 Ogilvie, Mary, 291, 322–23, 328, 329, 334–35 Ogle, Christine, 252 Olivier, Edith, 88–89 O’Neill, Onora, 314 Oppenheimer, Helen, 312 Order of Merit, 213, 304, 349n29 Order of St. Michael and St. George, 355n15 Order of the British Empire, 124, 345n22 Owen, Ursula, 316

374

Her Oxford

Oxford Magazine on change in degree ceremony, 274 chastised Dean J. W. Burgon, 49 complaints by women undergraduates in (1930s), 238–39 on degrees for women (1919), 183 on Delegacy for Women Students, 147–48 on Dr. Anne Whiteman, 280 on honoring war leaders, 261 letter on educating women, 283 on quota on women students, 228 on relaxation of rules for undergraduates, 270 on Somerville debate with Balliol, 152–53 on St. Hugh’s “row,” 218–20 tribute to Julia de Lacy Mann, 323 woman undergraduate rebuts sexual statistics in, 237–38 Oxford Students’ Debating Society (SDS), 152 Oxford Union Society, 240, 267–68, 281 Oxford University abolished Greek for responsions, 184 abolished quota on women undergraduates, 223–28 admitted women’s colleges to full status, 280 and AEW, 22, 50–51 allowed women to be parliamentary electors, 181 allowed women to take examinations retroactively, 187–88 bestowed honorary degrees on women, 119, 188, 190, 209, 293, 294, 304 bestowed honorary MAs on women principals, 188 created Common University Fund (CUF), 323–24 created Delegacy for Home-Students, 202–3 created Delegacy for Women Students, 146–51 degree ceremonies for women, 189–90, 274 determined academic dress for women, 186 disciplinary rules, 229–33, 270–71 established special women’s examinations, 20, 40, 46 financial aid to women’s colleges, 200–201, 332, 334–36 honored war leaders, 260–61 imposed quota on women undergraduates, 223–28 and Local Examinations, 5, 15 opened degrees to women, 182–83



opened men’s examinations to women, 46–50, 179–80 postwar problems, 261–63 preferred gradual transition to mixed colleges, 286–87 reaction to student dissent, 240–42 reform, 16–19, 143–44, 200 refused degrees to women, 101–9 and the St. Hugh’s “row,” 218–19 urged women’s colleges to seek incorporation, 221 and World War I, 160, 163, 175 and World War II, 244–49, 258–59 Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), 267–68 Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), 231, 268, 281 Oxford University Press, 246, 342n1 Oxford Women’s College Fund, 201–2 Oxford Women Students Society for Women’s Suffrage (OWSSWS), 94, 158 Park, Daphne, 251, 306 Parker, Peter, 266 Parliament (Qualification of Women Act) (1918), 181 Parliament (Somerville), 152–53 Paton Walsh, Jill, 319 Pearce, Joyce, 303 Pearl, Valerie Louise, 319 Pearson, Edith, 46, 59, 60, 86 Peck, Winifred, 284 Pelham, Henry, 108, 109 Penrose, Emily career outside Oxford, 116–17 disliked women’s academic caps, 186 drew up disciplinary rules for women students, 153–54 honors, 209 personality, 131 pickaxe incident, 178–79 principal, Somerville College, 118, 130–33, 155–56, 163–64, 187, 234, 291 retirement, 209 role in Delegacy for Women Students, 149–50 women’s suffrage supporter, 158–59 Percival, John, 21, 48 Perham, Margery, 299 Perrone, Fernanda, 58–59 Peters, Penny, 258, 267 Pickford, Mary (politician), 129

Piper, Mary Myfanwy, 308 Pitt, Valerie, 258 Platts, Joan, 214 Plumer, Eleanor, 257–58, 263, 275–76, 291, 322, 334 Poole, Austin Lane, 276–77 Poole, Dorothy Lane, 187, 189, 205 Pope, Mildred, 77, 79, 121 Porter, Mary Winearls, 190, 300 Potter, Katy, 268 Potter, Margaret, 256, 316 Powell, Dilys, 234, 297 Prescott, Hilda, 294 Prestwich, Menna, 328, 329 Proctor, Evelyn, 227, 271, 291, 322, 327, 333 Purdie, Edna, 297 Pyke, Margaret, 297, 346n15 Pym, Barbara, 309 Queens College for Women, 3–5 Quigley, Janet, 294 quota on women undergraduates, 222–28, 249, 261–63, 276–77, 279, 286, 335–36 Ramm, Agatha, 324, 357n13 Rantzen, Esther, 314 Rathbone, Eleanor, 120–22, 210, 254 Rawlings, Margaret, 231 Rayne, Max, 358n13 Rayne Foundation, 335, 358n13 recreations of women undergraduates acting, 268–29 bicycling, 89–90, 92 debating societies, 42, 152–53 field hockey, 41, 94, 153 in-college clubs, 42, 230 in-college theatricals, 42, 93, 96, 151–52, 194 intercollegiate clubs and societies, 231, 239, 241, 267–68, 269 rowing, 42, 95, 153, 192 Reeves, Marjorie, 149, 204–5, 327, 334 Reform Bill (1832), 112–13 Reform Bill (1867), 113, 115 Reid, Elizabeth, 4, 282 Reid, Hilda, 297 Renault, Mary (Eileen Mary Challans), 234, 308 Representation of the People Act (1918), 180–81, 344–45n16 representative of the women’s colleges, 280 Reynolds, Gillian, 319

Index

375

Rhondda, Viscountess. See Thomas, Margaret Haig Rich, Florence, 29, 40, 64 Richardson, Joanna, 319 Richmond, Jane, 157 Roberts, Margaret, 58 Robbins Report (1963), 331, 332 Robinson, Margaret Hayes, 131, 134, 136 Rogers, A.M.A.H. (Annie), 193 as AEW Committee member and tutor, 22, 31 as AEW secretary, 75, 342n5 bicycling and, 90 death, 242–43 Delegacy for Women Students and, 148–51 drew up disciplinary rules for women students, 153–54 Hebdomadal Council and, 224–25, 242 quoted, 26, 48, 100, 103, 137, 143, 159, 233 as St. Hugh’s Council member and tutor, 82–83 St. Hugh’s gardens and, 139 supported degrees for women, 102–11, 144, 159, 183–84 supported opening men’s examinations to women, 49 wanted designation for AEW students, 27 won exhibition to Worcester College, Oxford, 15 Rogers, S. J., 278 Rooke, Eleanor, 157, 215 Rothwell, Margaret, 312 Routledge, Katharine, 120 Rowe, Dorothy, 346n15 Rowse, Alfred Leslie, 245 Royden, Maude, 125–27, 170, 241 Ruskin, John, 9, 113 Sacher, Miriam, 335–36 Salter, W. H., 141 Sarginson, Kathleen, 324 Saunders, Cicely, 310 Savery, Constance, 164, 190, 297 Sayce, Olive, 324, 357n13 Sayers, Dorothy, 96 author of Gaudy Night, 77 biography, 297 among first group of women graduates, 190 quoted, 300 as Somerville student, 151–52, 154–55, 164 and World War I, 161, 171

376

Her Oxford

Schools Inquiry Commission, 7–9 Scott-James, Anne, 306 Scovell, Edith Joy, 306 Seebohm, Caroline, 314 settlements, 59–60 Seward, Margaret, 32, 49, 63–64 Sex Discrimination Act, 287 Sharp, Evelyn, 307 sharp practice, 152 Shaw Lefevre, Madeleine, 24, 35–38, 42, 45, 74–75, 291 Shears, David, 270 Sheavyn, Phoebe, 78 Sheldon, Frances, 42 Sheldonian Theatre, 48, 189, 209, 260, 341n12, 343n8 Shephard, Gillian, 317 Sherwood, Shirley, 268, 271 Shirley. See Bronte, Charlotte Shirreff, Emily, 8 Sidgwick, Arthur, 48, 76, 106–7, 144 Sidgwick, Eleanor (Mrs. Henry), 140–41 Sidgwick, Henry, 12–13 Simpson, Helen de Guerry, 300 Smalley, Beryl, 328 Smieton, Mary, 303 Smith, Eleanor, 19 Society of Oxford Home-Students appointed principals, 27–28, 76, 203–4, 205 benefactions, 205–6, 275 buildings and property, 206, 263, 275 came under control of Delegacy for HomeStudents, 202–3 came under control of Delegacy for Women Students, 150 campaign for name change, 207, 352n10 early students’ careers (1879–1910), 72–73, 129 entrance examination introduced, 204 finances, 150, 200–201 first graduates, 189–90 hostesses for Home-Students, 205, 263 incorporated as St. Anne’s College, 275–76 need for cohesiveness, 84 notable graduates (1910–1960), 300, 309–10, 317–20 old students’ association, 150 origin of name, 27 quota on women undergraduates imposed, 226 renamed St. Anne’s Society, 263, 352n10 responsibility of the AEW, 27

Ship, 84 tutors, 204–5 war work in World War II, 257–58 See also St. Anne’s College Solomon, Barbara, 99 Somerville, Mary (broadcaster), 307 Somerville, Mary (mathematician), 23 Somerville College academic standing, 279, 288, 353–54n7 achieved full status as Oxford college, 280–81 admitted male undergraduates, 287 appointment of principals, 24–25, 74, 130, 209–10, 291, 321 beginnings, 21–26 buildings and property, 26, 80–81, 131–32, 331–32 celebrations, 49, 210 chapel controversy, 211–12 cheese lunch scheme, 238–39 early students’ careers (1879–1910), 58, 60, 63–66, 116–24, 128 entrance examination, 130 fellowships, 79, 324 finances, 132, 200, 331–32, 336 first graduates, 190 friction with AEW, 74, 110 governance, 23, 76, 221–22, 274–75 identity, 21, 23, 120, 132–33, 156, 236, 354n24 incorporation, 221–22 life in college, 35–45, 92–93, 96, 151–57, 193–95 married fellows, 329–30 notable graduates (1910–1960), 294–98, 304–7, 313–15 old students’ association, 80, 211–12, 221–22 origin of name, 23 Parliament, 152–53 quota imposed on women undergraduates, 226 rules and restrictions, 36, 155–56, 163–64, 235–36 temporary removal to Oriel, 163–64, 178 tutors, 32, 59, 77–79, 131, 212–13, 324–25 women’s suffrage, 158–59 World War II and, 245–46, 251 Sorabji, Cornelia, 65–66, 120 Spencer, Rosemary, 317 Spens, Janet, 174 Spooner, William Archibald, 81, 342–43n13

St. Anne’s College academic standing, 288, 353–54n7 achieved full status, 280 admitted men at junior and senior levels, 287 appointed principals, 291, 322–23, 334 buildings and property, 196, 198, 334–35 governance, 276 identity, 354n24 married fellows, 329 notable graduates (1941–1960), 317–20 received charter of incorporation, 276 tutors, 327–28 See also Society of Oxford Home-Students St. Anne’s Society, 263, 352n10 St. Hilda’s College, 197 academic standing, 279, 288, 353–54n7 achieved full status as Oxford college, 280 amalgamation with St. Hilda’s College, Cheltenham, 135, 222 appointment of principals, 86, 136, 213, 291, 323, 336 beginnings, 84–88 benefactions, 335–36 buildings and property, 85–86, 88, 214–15, 335–36 Chronicle, 136 early students’ careers (1893–1910), 128–29, 190 ended single-sex status, 287 finances, 135–36, 200, 335–36 food in college, 256, 264 formal opening, 86 governance, 88, 135, 221–22, 274–75 identity, 87, 354n24 incorporation as St. Hilda’s College, 222 married fellows, 329 notable graduates (1910–1960), 299–300, 309, 316–17 old students’ association, 136 origin of name, 86 quota on women undergraduates imposed, 226 relationship with AEW, 85–88 rowing, 153, 192 rules and restrictions, 234, 265, 268, 273 tutors, 215, 328 St. Hugh’s College academic standing, 279, 288, 353–54n7, 354–55n8 achieved full status as Oxford college, 280–81

Index

377

admitted men as senior and junior members, 287 appointed principals, 52, 142, 220, 291, 322 beginnings, 51–53 buildings and property, 52–53, 138–39, 143, 216, 220–21, 333–34 cheese lunch scheme, 239 Club Paper, 83 connection with Versailles adventure, 140–42 deplorable food, 53, 137, 264 early students’ careers (1886–1910), 54, 58, 71–72, 128–29 endowment by Joan Evans, 358n7 first graduates, 189 governance, 54–55, 82, 138, 221–22, 274–75 identity, 54–55, 354n24 in-college crisis, 217–21 incorporation, 221–22 life in college, 152, 155, 230, 233–34, 237, 265–67, 271 married fellows, 330 notable graduates (1910–1960), 298–99, 307–9, 315–16 old students’ association, 82–83, 138, 221–22 origin of name, 51 quota on women undergraduates imposed, 226 received endowed scholarship, 83 supported degrees for women, 101–2 tutors, 82–83, 138, 326–27 uneasy relationship with Elizabeth Wordsworth, 54–55, 220 women’s suffrage involvement, 157–58 World War II and, 246, 258–59 St. John, Christopher (Christabel Marshall), 127–28 Stainer, Pauline, 319 Starkie, Enid, 164, 212, 297, 324 Startup, Joyce, 265 Stewart, Alice, 325–26 Stewart, Frances, 314 Stocks, John L., 159–60 Stocks, Mary Danvers, 121–22, 159 Stoddart, Anne E., 314 Stowell, Hilda M., 278 Strachan-Davidson, James Leigh, 108 Strachey, Barbara, 303 Strachey, Ray, 115, 344n7 Sturgeon, Nora, 239 suffrage. See women’s suffrage

378

Her Oxford

Summerskill, Shirley, 315 Sutherland, Lucy first woman pro-vice-chancellor at Oxford, 280 honors, 322 principal, Lady Margaret Hall, 291, 321–22, 332 reaction to quota, 227 spoke before Oxford Union Society, 222–23 tutor and fellow, Somerville College, 212 war work in World War II, 249, 251 Sweeting, Marjorie, 326–27 Syfret, Rosemary, 324, 357n13 Sykes, Ella, 70 Talbot, Edward, 21, 23 Talbot, Lavinia, 21, 25 Talbot, Mary, 44 Taylor, Susette, 70 Thatcher, Margaret, 267, 268, 315 Thomas, Margaret Haig (Viscountess Rhondda), 156–57, 162, 296 Thompson, Rachel, 271 Thompson, Sylvia, 297 Thornton, Dora, 328 Thwaite, Ann, 317, 328 Tillotson, Kathleen, 307 Time and Tide, 157, 296. See also Thomas, Margaret Haig Tindell, Gillian, 312 Tomlinson, Muriel, 328 Trenaman, Nancy, 307, 335 Trevelyan, Katharine, 235 Trevor, Meriol, 308 Trickett, Rachel, 217, 220, 288, 322, 327 Trinity College, Dublin, 110–11 Tupper, Rosemary, 266 Turner-Warwick, Margaret, 313 University Grants Committee (UGC), 123, 324, 332–36, 358n2 University Reform Act (1854), 16–17 University Reform Act (1877), 16–18 University Tests Act (1871), 17 Vaughan, Janet, 252–53, 277, 291, 321–22, 329, 331–32 Viner, Monique, 316 Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), 347–48n9 Waddell, Helen, 298 Waddy, Charis, 303–4 Wallace, Doreen, 298

Wallbank, Phyllis, 233 Warburton, Anne, 315 Ward, Barbara, 307 Ward, Humphry, 18 Ward, Mary Augusta (Mrs. Humphry), 18–19, 21, 26, 158, 181 Wardale, Edith, 72, 82, 83, 157, 218 Warnock, Mary, 219, 284, 326, 329–30 Warriner, Doreen, 254, 308–9 Wayne, Jenifer, 211, 235 Wedgwood, C. V., 304 Wells, Joseph, 225, 227–28 Whitby, Joy, 320 White, Eirene, 307 Whitelock, Dorothy, 215, 328 Whiteman, Anne, 280, 325 Wilberforce, Marian, 252 Wilde, Agnes, 189 Williams, Cicely, 190, 254–55, 298 Williams, Ivy, 189–90, 204, 263 Williams, Shirley, 268, 269, 315 Wilson, Elizabeth, 354n24 Wolfson, Isaac, 332 Wolfson Foundation, 332–35 women dons difficulties of the job, 79, 116 failure to attain senior positions, 116, 287–88, 344n8, 354n4 incorporation and, 222 lack of representation on governing councils, 79, 138, 221 at Lady Margaret Hall, 81–82, 325–26 marriage and children, 329–30 pioneers in higher education as profession, 58–59, 64, 70, 72, 116–18 salaries and pensions, 79, 199–200, 323–24 at Society of Oxford Home-Students, 204–5 at Somerville, 77–79, 131, 212–13, 324–25, 357n13 at St. Anne’s, 275–76, 327–28 at St. Hilda’s, 215, 328–29 at St. Hugh’s, 82–83, 138, 217–20, 326–27 women’s colleges achieving full status and, 280–81 in World War I, 172–74 in World War II, 249 women in Victorian England (1837–1901) authors, 113 career opportunities, 57–61 cult of domesticity, 114 educational opportunities, 3–5, 8–14, 19–32, 51–56, 84–88, 99–100, 115, 281–82



marriage prospects for middle-class women, 1–2, 61–62 opposition to education for girls and women, 2, 21, 26, 57, 282 outnumbered men, 1 philanthropy, 114–15, 120 plight of governesses, 1–4 poor schooling for middle-class girls, 2, 6–8 second-class citizens, 114 suffrage, 115 women undergraduates at Oxford academic caliber, 130, 279, 288–89, 353–54n7 academic dress, 185–87 achieved right to take degrees, 183, 188–90 and assimilation into a male university, 47–48, 106–8, 227–28, 230–31, 382–84 breaking the rules, 89, 154–55, 233–36, 258 called “students,” 33, 272 careers after Oxford, 51, 57–61, 63–73, 116–29, 293–320 chaperones and, 30–31, 36, 88–89, 233–34 cheese lunch scheme, 238–39 curfews, 89, 233, 270–71, 273 denied membership in male societies, 230–31, 250, 267–68 dress and, 35–36, 155–56, 265–66 early students’ delight in college, 38–41, 43, 284 flexible arrangements of study, 50–51, 100–102, 110 impact of mixed colleges on, 287–90 at lectures in men’s colleges, 30–31, 36, 38, 88–89 marriage, 61–62, 330 numbers of, 26, 223, 261, 281, 285–87 quota on numbers of, 223–27, 249, 261, 276–77 and rationing, 172, 256–57, 163–65 relationship to men at Oxford, 42–43, 230–31, 236, 269–72 rigid supervision of, 34, 155, 163–64, 174–75, 229–30, 232, 271 sex and, 235–38, 271–72, 273 war work in World War I, 164–68, 170–72 and women’s suffrage, 157–58 and World War II, 245, 248–49, 257–58 See also recreations of women undergraduates women’s colleges achieved full status as Oxford colleges, 280–81 admitted men at junior and senior levels, 287

Index

379

advantage of location, 26 appeals for money, 200–202, 277–79 and Common University Fund, 323–24 and Delegacy for Women Students, 146–49 effect of St. Hugh’s “row,” 221–22 governance (see individual colleges) identities (see individual colleges) lack of unanimity in first degree campaign, 101–6 mixed colleges and, 286–90 modeled on home life, 23, 35, 37–39, 136 money woes, 199, 277, 284 move toward greater autonomy, 75–77, 221–22, 274–76 opposition to quota on women undergraduates, 223–28 pressure to expand, 199, 263, 277, 331, 336 restrictions on students, 34–38, 88–89, 153–56, 229–30, 232, 271, 273 UGC funds. See University Grants Committee and World War I, 171 and World War II, 249, 256 See also individual colleges Women’s First Examination, 20, 29–30 Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, 126 Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), 157–58 women’s suffrage, 115, 126, 157–59, 180–81, 212, 344n15 Wood, Susan, 326, 330 Woodcock, Louisa, 65 Woodford, Peggy, 320 Woodham-Smith, Cecil, 299–300 Woolf, Rosemary, 316 Wooller, Eleanor, 328 Wordsworth, Elizabeth, 91 anti-women’s suffrage, 124, 126, 158 attitude toward marriage, 61–62 attitude toward St. Hilda’s, 85 background, 23–24 bicycling, 90 honors, 209 involvement in first campaign for degrees, 103 involvement with St. Hugh’s, 51–56, 220 principal, Lady Margaret Hall, 24, 26, 35–38, 41–44, 81–82, 133–34, 291 retirement, 133–34 supported opening men’s examinations to women, 48–49 supported Women’s First Examination, 29

380

Her Oxford

Wordsworth, John, 18, 24, 338n6 World War I created conflict for women students, 164–68, 170–71 effect on women dons, 172–74 end of war celebration, 174 enlistment of male population at Oxford, 160, 162 flu epidemic, 174 former women students’ war work, 168–70 loss of life, 175 postwar effects, 176–79 postwar effects on women, 179–85 women students’ war work, 171–72

World War II effects on male and female dons, 248–51 effects on male and female undergraduates, 247–49 end of war, 258–59 former women students’ war work, 251–56 honoring war leaders, 260–61 postwar problems, 261–65 war preparations in Oxford, 244–47 wartime austerities, 256–57 women students’ war work, 257–58 Wyld, Florence, 90 Young, Janet, 320

Credits The images in this book were reproduced by kind permission of the following: Principal and Fellows of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (pp. 91, 94 [both], 95, 98, 196 [top]); Principal and Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford (pp. 92 [top], 93, 96, 193 [bottom], 194, 195); Principal and Fellows of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford (frontispiece, pp. 92 [bottom], 191, 192, 197); William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Canada (p. 97); Principal and Fellows of St. Anne’s College, Oxford (pp. 193 [top], 196 [bottom], 198). Every effort has been made to find and contact copyright holders, but it has not always been possible to do so. If notified, the publishers will be pleased to rectify any omission in future editions.